


Grim Reaper

by Akiko_Natsuko



Series: Reaper76 [58]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt, Love, M/M, Memories, Past Relationship(s), Reconciliation, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 06:09:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17197979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akiko_Natsuko/pseuds/Akiko_Natsuko
Summary: They had both fallen that day, consumed by the flames that had risen to devour them. Jack shuddered, form coming undone as grief consumed him. He remembered now with painful lucidity how he’d lain there buried in the rubble, drowning in his own blood, that strange smoke burning its way down his throat as he had called for Gabriel.





	1. Prologue

_“Damn it, Gabriel, just for once can we not argue about this?” He whispered, rubbing a hand over his face, feeling every one of his years for once and he couldn’t stop himself from pleading as he caught the frown on Gabriel’s face. “Please, I’m tired.” No, tired didn’t come close to explaining the exhaustion that permeated every inch of his body and thoughts right now, his shoulders sagging. He was done. He wanted nothing more than for everything to just disappear, the worries, the pressure, the expectations… the arguments…and not for the first time he wondered what would happen if he just left, just up and disappeared and left someone else to bear the burden of Overwatch._

_He wouldn’t go through with it. He had tried once, even had everything packed and ready to go. It had been then, staring at his pitiful number of belongings that he had realised that at some point over the years everything he had and was, was here at Overwatch. And so, he had stayed, and so he would remain until someone told him he could go. Until he was free._

_“Jack,” Gabriel looked pained, and Jack wondered just what his expression must be showing to draw that kind of response from the other man, one hand rising as though he was going to reach for Jack before he stopped himself, hand curling into a fist at his side instead. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to argue either, but you can’t keep ignoring this.” Jack immediately bristled at the insinuation that he was ignoring the information that Blackwatch, that Gabriel kept lying on his desk, even though he couldn’t blame Gabriel for thinking like that when the U.N had his hands so tied at this point that he could barely do anything. Still, he couldn’t ignore the accusations, opening his mouth to protest._

_“I’m…” A muffled boom from somewhere deep within the building made him pause, tension rippling through him as the entire building shuddered. “Athena! What…?” He wasn’t given a chance to finish, the base shaking as more explosions ripped through it, moving closer, and his eyes widened in horrified realisation as his eyes flew to Gabriel, seeing the same dawning horror in his partner’s eyes. “Gabe,” Jack lunged forward, knowing that it was a futile gesture, but wanting…needing…to be at Gabriel’s side, but it was too late, fire blossoming between them with a thunderous roar, and then he was falling. They were both falling, Gabriel’s terrified shout the last thing he heard before another explosion tore him away from the world._

_“JACK!”_

“Subject 76….” The cold, mechanical voice cut through the memory, and Jack swirled uncertainly, still caught in the surge of emotion that the unexpected memory had trigged, the terrified cry reverberating through every inch of him. He knew that voice, had heard it numerous times in his thought as he had slowly started to recall bits and pieces of his former existence, but never so clearly…and now he had a face to put to it, feeling a pang of something unfamiliar and terrifying as he thought back to the man he had been arguing with. The scarred features tugging at something at the edge of his consciousness, feeling as though he had lost something vitally important and hating the feeling, unable to do anything as he twisted and turned, little parts of him escaping in wisps of smoke.

_Gabriel. Gabriel. Gabriel._

_Who was he to me?_

    He was reminded of the fact that he wasn’t alone when the air in his prison changed, current running through the air, igniting the nanites that made up his disembodied form. It felt like he was burning, inside and out, just as he had on that day. _Gabriel._ He was swirling wildly now, trying to desperately escape the pain, slamming into one wall and breaking apart completely, the pain chasing him as he fled to the other side of the narrow room, struggling to pull himself together. It hurt. It burnt. _Stop,_ he wanted to beg them, but he knew that they wouldn’t even if he had been capable of solidifying long enough to say the words, having learnt that the hard way and for a fleeting moment he felt anger. Anger at the people hurting him, anger at this Gabriel who seemed to have cared for him and yet had left him behind in this state…but as with everything when he was in this state it was fleeting, numbness creeping in as the current began to taper off.

      When it disappeared completely, he sank to the floor, weakly swirling in the middle of the room, barely able to keep himself in one place. Yet he already knew what was coming, even before the speaker in the ceiling crackled to life once more. “Subject 76, you were ordered to attempt to form your left arm. Please do so, or we will be forced to apply proper motivation.” There was a brief spark of defiance, but Jack knew that it wasn’t an empty threat, and he didn’t have the strength to fight with them. Besides he owed the nameless, faceless voices for saving him, remembering vaguely how they had managed to gather his drifting form before it could dissipate beyond repair in the burning ruins where he had first come into awareness.

   He still wasn’t sure that he should thank them for it, but he knew that he owed them for it and for this featureless, sealed room that stopped him from coming apart completely. Knowing that they wouldn’t wait forever he stirred, rising, as he began the exhausting process of trying to pull his strange, disembodied body into some semblance of solidity. Part of him knew that at some point it hadn’t been like this, that he hadn’t always been like this. It had taken him a while, his memories a jumbled mess when he first been recovered, to the point where even his name had eluded him for days on end, ‘Subject 76’ the only thing he had to ground himself. Slowly though the memories had started to come back, little flashes here and there…his name…who he had been…faces and voices that he knew that he should remember, but seemed to linger just beyond his reach. Names…

_Ana._

_Lena._

_Angela._

_Reinhardt…_

    Some he had managed to put faces to, others were still little more than blurry impressions. And now there was Gabriel… he had heard the voice numerous times, but it was the first time he’d had such a clear memory of his face or felt the depth of emotion that came with it. _Who is he?_

   He knew from painful experience that the memories wouldn’t come just because he wanted them to, having spent long, fruitless hours trying to dredge them up from the back of his mind and, so he did what he had learned to do best and push it away. Instead forcing himself to focus on the task that he had been set, swirling in tighter and tighter circles as he tried to pull his nanites into the shape of an arm. They fought him every inch of the way and the temptation to just admit defeat was growing, he couldn’t even remember the last time he had managed to fully form his body, having a fleeting memory of standing on his own two feet before his form had dissolved completely. He wasn’t sure whether it was an issue with this strange new body of his, the nanites that now formed every inch of his being, or if the reluctance stemmed from some deep-seated part of him that was terrified to go back to who he had been.

    Painstakingly slowly he could feel the nanites starting to knit together, and he watched, part of him fascinated but a larger part repulsed as ever so slowly the pale smoke of his body coalesced into a pale, dead looking arm. It wasn’t perfect, barely reaching beyond his elbow, the skin translucent and fingers misshapen as though he had forgotten the shape they were supposed to be, little wisps of smoke already rising from them as his form wavered.

_Gabriel, where was Gabriel? Jack knew that they had been arguing although he couldn’t for the life of him remember what about, and he remembered his husband’s terrified shout as the world had gone up in fire and smoke around them. So, where was he now? His vision was blurred, shadows creeping in as he twisted his head, the rest of his body refusing to listen to his commands. He was surrounded by debris and a strange dark cloud that seemed too dense to be smoke although he couldn’t think what else it would be, or maybe it was just the darkness encroaching on his thoughts, his breathing shallow as his head lolled. At this angle he could see that his left arm was pinned, the once pristine SC uniform tattered and burnt, blood leaking onto the rock beneath him and his vision blurred further, this time with tears as he could vaguely make out the dull gleam of his wedding band._

    Jack’s concentration shattered, a deep groan of anguish reverberating through him as he lost control of his shape, fading to smoke once again, twisting in on himself as the latest memory replayed through his mind. _Gabriel…_ He was barely aware of the speakers coming to life once more.

“Well done. The results have been logged, Subject 76 you are to rest until the next test.” He had enough presence of mind to form a tendril of smoke and give a ‘nod’ to show that he understood, waiting until he heard the dull beep that indicated he was alone once more before retreating to a corner of the room, coiling into a swirling, twisting ball.

_Gabriel…_

_Oh Gods, Gabriel…._

    It was as though that memory had opened the floodgate, images…memories…feelings…flooding him, overwhelming him he was hit with grief so profound that he thought he might come apart there and then, and almost wished that he would.

_“Get up Morrison!” A gun-calloused hand gripped his shoulder, pulling him upright against the wall that they had taken shelter behind and leaning him back. Reyes’ expression belied his stern tone, concern in the dark eyes as he examined the gunshot wound that had downed him, fingers surprisingly gentle as he poked at it._

_“Bad?” Jack asked._

_“You’ll live,” Reyes reassured with a grin, but there was steel behind the words that told Jack it was a promise._

    He had lived. Reyes…Gabriel had patched him up and then hauled him out of there under heavy fire, taking several wounds himself, but refusing to listen to Jack’s pleas to be left behind.

_“Come on Gabe,” Jack pleaded, his voice cracking with desperation, not caring that the nurses and doctors could hear him or see the way that his fingers had curled around Gabriel’s. All he could focus on right now was the ragged rise and fall of Gabriel’s chest, the rattling sound of his breathing and the beeping of the machines that told him that the other man was still alive. For now. “You can’t die like this.” He could…Jack was painfully aware of how easy it would be for Gabriel to slip away now, his body no longer able to support the changes that SEP was forcing it through, they had lost too many of their cohort for him to pretend otherwise. “You can’t leave me behind.”_

   He hadn’t. It had been close, but Gabriel had clawed his way back from the brink, and Jack could remember the relief when he had been allowed back into the infirmary two mornings later to be greeted by his weak, exhausted, but very much alive best friend. That had also been the day they had admitted that they were something more, as Gabriel had wrapped him up in trembling arms, absorbing Jack’s sobs as he had returned the hug. _I came back because of you…_

    There were other memories chasing on the heels of those. Memories of fights, with other faces and names coming to him now with terrifying clarity, but all he could focus on was Gabriel. Gabriel leading them through the hell of the Omnic Crisis, always at his back, always there to hold him when a mission had gone wrong, and they were confronted with the tally of losses, making sure that his own recklessness and need to help everyone didn’t get him killed.

    The private ceremony witnessed only by those who had fought and bled with them through the worst of the crisis, Jack unable to stop smiling, while Gabriel had tears in his eyes as they finally slid the rings home.

_“I do,” Gabriel’s voice had wavered, thick with emotion and at that point Jack hadn’t been much better, struggling to get his voice to work as he stared at the band of gold on his fingers._

_“I do,” he repeated, even though he had already said it once, voice cracking in the middle. “Always,” he added as he stepped closer, leaning in to meet Gabriel midway as they kissed for the first time as husbands, ignoring Reinhardt’s wolf-whistle and Ana’s rather tearful sounding scolding._

   They had been so happy, riding on the wave of triumph with the success of their strike team and the end of the Omnic Crisis, adapting to married life with a breath-taking ease that had made Jack believe, naively that it would last forever. That they would get their always. Then things had started to go wrong…

   It had started innocuously enough, Gabriel getting passed over for the Strike Commander role that he had never really wanted but had deserved after leading them through the crisis had been the first chip in their armour, carved deeper when Jack had been given the position. But alone it would never have been enough to tear them apart, because Gabriel had never once begrudged Jack for the decision that had been out of either of their control, standing solidly behind him even as he carved out his own place in Blackwatch.

Blackwatch.

   Jack swirled, agitation growing, wishing that he could cling to the happier memories. However, now that the floodgates had been opened there was no stopping the memories.  It had gone downhill from there he remembered. The whispers and rumours staring a short while later when it became clear that the end of the Crisis hadn’t brought the peace they had hoped, and it seemed that wherever he turned there was more problems, more unrest, more people in need of help…to many…the pressure had bogged him down, the U.N. He twisted, anger seeping in this time…the U.N had tied him down, restricted his every action with bureaucracy and in his shadow, Gabriel had acted, the rumours and whispers of controversial experiments and methods, tales of torture and murder, growing like a rising wave until that was all Jack could see.

    At some point, his own limitations and the insidious whispers had started to carve a chasm between them, a void filled with angry words, lonely nights as they avoided each other, a distance that Jack hadn’t known how to breach. It had reached a point where he had dreaded being left alone with his husband, remembering the sinking feeling that had flooded him when Gabriel had corned him in the meeting room that day…and yet, he had never once removed his ring, never lost his hope that they would come through this. That they would have their always.

And then the world had exploded around them.

_JACK!_

They had both fallen that day. Jack shuddered, form coming undone as grief consumed him. He remembered now with painful lucidity how he had lain there buried in the rubble, drowning in his own blood, the strange smoke burning its way down his throat as he had called for Gabriel. Needing to hear his voice. Wanting to see his face one last time.

Only he had never come.

    Jack howled a terrible, grating noise that echoed through the sealed room and reverberated through every one of his nanites. Because he knew that no matter how much they had fought, however much he had hurt Gabriel with his inability to act or protect him, there was no way Gabriel would ever just abandon him. If he hadn’t come, then it was because he couldn’t…and Jack knew that there was only one thing that could have kept Gabriel from finding him that day, and he howled again. Rising. Swelling. No longer sure what the limits of his disembodied form were as he filled the room, tearing around it, trying to escape the pain engulfing him and wishing that he had never remembered. That he didn’t have to live the knowledge that no matter how changed he was, he had lived…

And Gabriel had died.


	2. Chapter 2

University Hospital, Zürich – The Morgue

    When Gabriel first sucked in a breath, it felt as though he had never done so before, his body coming to life around him and he almost regretted that first breath because with life, came pain. Lightning bolts of agony zigzagged through every inch of his body, worse than anything he had ever experienced before, which was saying something after living through SEP and the crisis, and he found himself biting his lip to pieces as he tried to bite back a noise of pain. It was a lost cause though, the pain rising, burning through him until it felt as though someone had sent him ablaze and there was no stopping the whimper that slipped free.

    The sound echoed, distorting as it bounced off the walls around him, sending a shiver down his spine and despite the pain that still had his eyes watering, he tried to focus on his surroundings. Had a mission gone wrong? He couldn’t remember, something that unsettled him more than anything, because he always remembered. Part of it was the enhancements, the other was necessity, but in the past, he had never once forgotten what mission he was on, what his goal was, even when he had been concussed and bleeding out, so the strange void in his thoughts scared him. However, when he finally managed to bring the world into enough focus to take in his surroundings, there was another reason for his fear as he took in the low ceiling and narrow walls, already feeling as though they were closing in on him.

    Flailing, unable to coordinate his throbbing, screaming body, he collided with the wall and tensed at the metallic sound that reverberated through the narrow space. The contact had him howling, the pain reaching new levels and for few minutes the world narrowed down to the pain, shadows swooping into vision, and something unpleasant tugged at the edge of his consciousness. _A memory of flames and smoke, darkness stealing across his vision…_ Yet when he tried to grab hold of it, the memory slipped through his fingers leaving him feeling strangely bereft and he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more missing, much more, but as unpleasant as the feeling was, it gave him something to cling to beyond the pain.

    Slowly he managed to ground himself in the present once more, blinking heavily to clear his vision, squinting as he realised that some of the darkness was due to the lack of light wherever he was. In fact, when he managed to crane his neck up, the only light he could spy was a narrow strip near his feet, and he frowned, stretching his toes towards it, only to come up short when he realised that he wasn’t dressed in his standard uniform. He shifted, biting down on his already bloodied lip to stop himself from whimpering again, realising that he was laid on metal too and by the feeling of it, the only stitch of clothing he had to his name was his boxers. His expression darkened. Had he been captured? Was this someone’s way of trying to stop him from escaping?

     He reached down, using his hands to explore as even his sharper than normal sight was no use in this situation, his concern and wariness intensifying when his fingers encountered what felt fresh scarring, and stitches that he didn’t remember getting. He was just exploring a particular stretch of stitching, wondering at the lack of bandaging as the wound felt like it was still healing, when his fingers stilled in their searching as one of the things that were missing dawned on him. He flexed his finger, searching for the familiar weight of his wedding ring, but it wasn’t there, and a panicked scramble along the floor of his current prison turned up no sign of it.  _Jack…_ He had never once taken the ring off, even when he had covered up who he was married to on missions and he felt lost without its familiar weight, and a moment later it felt like he was drowning as a memory slammed into him.

_‘Damn it, Gabriel, just for once can we not argue about this?” Gabriel’s initial reaction was to snap at his husband, irritation bubbling up, but he was glad that he had bit back the urge as he watched Jack rub a hand over his face. Watching him like this, it was shocking to realise just how exhausted he looked. Not the kind of exhaustion that would be eased by a night’s sleep, but the type that was written deep into every inch of his body, evident in the lines around the blue eyes that hadn’t been there before and the threads of silver amongst the gold. Jack…his fingers twitched, longing to reach out and trace those new lines, run his fingers through the silver and gold, to pull his husband close, and lift the weight from his shoulders even if it was just for a few minutes. Instead, he stayed where he was because they needed to talk about this now, they needed to deal with this crisis and then maybe he would have the time to give in to such longings, and Jack’s expression seemed to crumple a bit further. “Please…I’m tired.”_

_Gabriel could hear the words that he didn’t say. Tired of the fighting, of the distance…of the job that seemed to have taken over every inch of their life, creating a vast distance between them that Gabriel was starting to fear would never be mended. He wished that he could. Wished that the two of them could walk away from this mess, start the life they’d once dreamt of living together. Hell, on his downtime he’d even let himself look at possible places to live, not too close to home for either of them, but not too far, somewhere quiet where they might be able to fade into the woodwork. It felt like a pipe dream these days, growing more distant with each angry word, each mission, each secret that crept in between them, but he kept the list he had made, secreted deep in his files in the hopes that one day he would be able to bring it out to show Jack and see those blue eyes brighten._

_Today wasn’t that day._

_“Jack…” He murmured, wondering if he looked as weary as he felt, hating the fact that he had to be the one to push, knowing that his words were only going to add to the rift between them, his shoulders slumping. This time he couldn’t stop his hand from rising, reaching for Jack and he had taken half a step forward before he realised what he was doing and stopped himself. The mission had to come first, and he hated it, his hand falling to his side and curling into a fist. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to argue either, but you can’t keep ignoring this Jack.” It was easier to focus, to push through his worry for Jack by concentrating on his irritation, and there was plenty to be irritated about… the current inquiry, the fact that Jack seemed unwilling to act on any of the intel Blackwatch had been sending his way, the fact that Overwatch and Jack seemed to be distancing themselves from what was happening in the world._

_“I’m not…” Jack had stiffened at his words, no doubt hearing the accusation in them and there was a fire in his eyes, his tone sharp and defensive, but he wasn’t given a chance to finish as a muffled boom echoed through the building. They both froze, dread creeping down Gabriel’s spine and threatening to blossom into fear as the building shuddered under their feet, and he found himself stumbling towards Jack who was already demanding answers from the A.I. “Athena! What the hell is…?” Once more Jack was cut off, more explosions rocking the base, ripping through the building and moving towards them and Gabriel swallowed, realising that his intelligence, his warnings, they’d all come too late. He lifted his head, meeting Jack’s gaze and seeing the same dawning horror and realisation in his eyes, and then Jack was lunging towards him with a desperation that broke Gabriel’s heart. “Gabe!”_

_They never reached each other, fire blossoming between them with a thunderous roar and Gabriel felt the floor crumbling beneath him. Yet he couldn’t focus on that, or the fact that he was now free-falling through the air, his attention riveted on the man falling beside him, frantically straining towards him, blue eyes wide with terror. “JACK!” He screamed, not even sure that the words would reach him over the sounds of explosions and the base…their home…falling with them, and then the world erupted in fresh flames and smoke, flinging them away from each other and all Gabriel knew was pain and darkness._

      He was gasping, heart hammering in his chest, feeling as though there wasn’t enough air in the world as he reached out with grasping fingers. _Jack._ _Where was Jack?_ He had never woken from an injury without Jack by his side since the day they’d partnered in SEP, his partner breaking into the infirmary at times to take up residence in the chair beside him, and even when things had turned rocky between them if he was ever injured he would find Jack beside him. He wasn’t there now though, his fingers closing on empty air and a leaden weight settled in the pit of his stomach.

_Jack…_

    There was a memory, an image, that was trying to push itself to the forefront of his mind, but he shoved it away, not ready to confront it yet. Instead, he focused on the fact that he needed to get out of here, wherever here was, clinging to that idea, using it to push through the pain and panic, thrashing as he lashed out with hands and feet, trying to find a weakness in his prison.

    It was only when his feet slammed into the metal above the tiny sliver of light that he felt some give, the metal shuddering under the impact, the noise echoing through the narrow space and making his ears ring. It was uncomfortable, but he ignored it in favour of slamming his feet into the metal, again and again, feeling it slowly giving way. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been built with a determined, enhanced soldier and it was only a few more minutes before the metal lost the fight, flying outwards under the force of Gabriel’s efforts.

    He stilled as he heard the metal land heavily on the floor, chest heaving from the exertion, shadows once again crowding in on his vision. His efforts had fanned the pain to impossibly greater heights, and he was unable to do anything but lie there and focus on breathing for the next few minutes, almost wishing that he could just pass out. However, gradually his vision began to clear once more, and after listening intently for a moment, he carefully began to inch his body forward, glad that the surface he was laid on was smooth because the slow, clumsy shuffle forward was all he could manage right now. It still took him longer than he liked to ease his body out of the gap he had made, and his attempt to land on his legs was foiled when they caved beneath him, sending him tumbling to the ground, unable to hold back a sharp cry as the impact jostled his body.

     His already abused lip protested as he bit down to cut off the sound, silently scolding himself for his carelessness. He knew better, it was how he had stayed alive all this time... _it hadn’t stopped his failure,_ a bitter part of whispered, reminding of why he had been so focused on escaping, and he slowly lifted his head to see where he was, a shiver working its way down his spine. He had been in a room like this too many times to count, whenever a mission had gone wrong, and he had lost an agent, in the clean-up when they were checking the target was down, and he swallowed hard. _Why am I here?_ His breath caught as his gaze trailed over the gurneys, before turning to look at where he had come from, trembling as he took in the line of cabinets, all sealed apart from the one he had broken out of.

A morgue.

He was in a morgue.

    Slowly his fingers crept back to the stitched wounds, and in the sterile lighting of the room, he could see that what he had passed off for normal injuries were anything but. There were some that he knew must have come from the explosion, although they looked too advanced in their healing, and his hand hovered over one that ran down his chest and trailed round to his hip where it looked like a chunk of flesh had been carved out of him. His vision flickering as he was assaulted with the memory of burning pain and blood gushing against his fingers. _No._ He shook his head, pushing the image away, not ready to remember and instead turned his attention to the other wounds…the ones that didn’t look like they had come from an explosion, feeling sick to his stomach as he recognised the distinctive marks of a body that had undergone an autopsy.

What the hell was going on?

     He wasn’t dead, even if he might have wished it as his body continued to burn and throb with each shaky breath and with Jack…His thoughts skittered away from that subject, although it didn’t stop the weight in the pit of his stomach intensifying, hands curling into fists once more and allowing him to feel the absence of his wedding ring. _Jack…_

    Desperate for a distraction he looked around for the door he had kicked off, trying not to think about how much it felt like he had clawed his way out of his own grave now that he knew where he was. It lay not too far away, and he pulled it closer, turning it over, eyes narrowing as he took in the file attached to the front of it, the folder bent and battered now, but no so badly that he couldn’t see his name scrawled along the edge. _Gabriel Reyes_ , seeing his name on the front immediately made it more real, and it took him several attempts to detach the file and flip it open, afraid of what he was going to find. _Cause of death,_ the words screamed at him, impossible and yet there in black of white. _Smoke inhalation… blood loss…died at the scene…no attempts at resuscitation._ The words echoed through his mind, bile rising in the back of this throat as the memories and knowledge that he had been fighting so hard to keep at a distant swept over him.

     _It felt like he had been falling for a lifetime, and Gabriel knew that he must’ve lost consciousness at some point, because he had no recollection of hitting the ground, rubble piling itself around him. However, there was no mistaking his return to consciousness, because it came with a blaze of fire that had him screaming, a hoarse, broken sound that was lost in the roar of the flames around him and the sound of rocks and glass fighting to find an equilibrium. Experience had made him force himself into stillness, just focusing on breathing, a task made harder by the smoke filling the air, a thick haze of it curling around him as he blinked and tried to will himself into calmness._

_Eventually, he had to look, immediately wishing he hadn’t as he took in the deep laceration that ran down his chest, curving around to his hip, nausea rising as he realised there was flesh missing at the deepest point of the wound. The culprit lay nearby, a thick piece of rebar, glistening wetly in the glow of the flames and he had to twist his head to the side, unable to hold onto the contents of his stomach at the sight. He had a vague recollection of seeing it flying towards him as he fell, could remember the fear and the desperate twist to the side to try and avoid it. Apparently, he hadn’t been as successful as he had hoped, although he knew that he should be grateful that it hadn’t pierced him fully. It was hard to feel like that though, with the acrid stench of vomit now tormenting his nose, and his fingers shaking as he moved to press down on the deeper part of the wound, a voice at the back of his mind that sounded suspiciously like Jack telling him to put pressure on it._

_Jack._

_How could he have forgotten?_

_Jack had been right there beside him, at least until that explosion had flung them apart and forgetting about his wound Gabriel pushed himself upright as best he could, gasping as fire lanced through his side, the world disappearing in a swirl of colours. Jack. Jack. Jack. His husband's name was a mantra that allowed him to push through the pain, blinking again and again until he could see enough to look around, although the shadows lingered around the edges, or maybe that was the strangely thick smoke that seemed to be pressing in on him worse than ever._

_It took him a couple of passes before he finally spotted, the flash of that hated blue amongst the rubble, although the colour was marred by charring and blood, and ever so slowly he allowed his gaze to follow it, tracing it until he spied pale fingers lying outstretched as though Jack was still reaching for him. Gabriel had to summon his courage to move his gaze upwards, immediately wishing that he hadn’t, because Jack looked dead, lying like a broken doll amongst the wreckage, his front a mess of blood and charred material. His face was turned towards Gabriel, but the once vibrant eyes were dull and unfocused, and for a long, terrifying minute Gabriel thought that it was too late, that Jack was already gone. However, as he watched Jack blinked, a slow, sluggish movement that was followed by a low, pained noise._

_“J-Jack…” He tried to call, desperate to let his husband know that he wasn’t alone, but his voice came out as a broken whisper, easily lost in the noise of the settling rubble, and that empty, haunting gaze seemed to pass right over him as he fought to get his voice to work properly. “Jack, I’m coming…” He promised, realising that everything else was a lost cause, before realising just how daunting that task promised to be, blood pooling against the hand he had pressed to his side. There was no other choice though because he would be damned if he left Jack alone._

_He’d thought that he’d known what pain was, had dragged himself to safety with bullet wounds and that memorable stab wound after Jesse’s mouth had got them into a spot of bother. However, nothing compared to this. Each faltering, exhausting inch was hard won, pain a constant companion as he crawled forwards. His fingers were slipping, slick with his own blood and the wound a line of burning agony that stole his breath and blurred his vision, and he wanted nothing more than to close his eyes, curl up and wake up when this nightmare was open. But Jack was waiting for him, the outstretched hand a beacon for his fading vision as his world narrowed down to each painful breath and the dull gleam of the wedding band on Jack’s finger._

_It felt like hours had passed before he finally felt his groping hand brush against Jack’s, relief flooding as he let himself slump, fingers curling around Jack’s. “Jack.” His vision was blurrier than ever, Jack’s features a blurry mess of pale skin, dirt and blood. “I’m here,” he added more forcefully when there was no reply, squeezing Jack’s fingers again, a cold, sinking feeling settling over him when he realised that Jack’s fingers weren’t curling around his, but lying limp and helpless in his grasp.  “Jack?” His voice cracked, desperation gripping him as he blinked, frantically trying to clear his vision. “Jack? JACK?!!” This time when he blinked he saw blue, the same clear, sky blue that he had fallen in love with years before and never stopped loving…but in this instance, he wished that he hadn’t seen it, because this blue was devoid of life, staring through him_

_“Jack…?” His husband had been alive moments before, he was sure of it, and his fingers tightened against his side, biting into his wound. Too long, he had taken too long, his body betraying when he had needed it most. Jack had been alive. Jack had been reaching for him, searching for him and Gabriel had been too slow. Too late._

_Always too late…_

_Too late with his warnings…_

_Too late to reach his husband…_

_There was a low keening noise, and it took him a moment to realise that he was the one making the sound, his hand falling away from his own wound as he reached out to grasp Jack’s hand between both of his. Had Jack known that he was nearby? That he had been fighting desperately to reach his side? He thought about that empty gaze, the grasping fingers and bile rose in his throat. Jack, did you know? Please say you did, and yet deep down he knew that Jack hadn’t, that he had lain here, his life seeping out of him and thinking that he had been abandoned. Had he remembered how Gabriel had screamed for him as they fell, or was his last memory of their argument?_

_“Jack…” Gabriel’s voice cracked, a sob shaking him as he dragged himself closer, curling around his husband’s body, refusing to relinquish the grip on his hand. “Jack…I’m here.” Too late, it was too little too late. There was a tiny part of him that told him that he couldn’t stay here, that he was going to die if he didn’t move._

_He didn’t care._

_There was no point now. He had only fought so hard for so long because he’d had Jack, because no matter how much his husband had irritated him and how great the rift had become between them, he had known that Jack was always there, waiting, that he still had something to fight for. A home, a family to come back to. And now that was gone and with it his will to fight. ‘Always’ they had promised one another on their wedding day, and again and again, countless times in the days that followed, but there was no always, not without Jack and, so he stayed, curled against Jack’s body, letting himself slip away with each drop of blood and struggling, gasping inhale. Praying that he would find Jack on the other side._

But he wasn’t dead.

     Gabriel’s hand was on his chest, lying over the marks that told he had been, fingers digging into the wounds as he felt the steady rise and fall of his chest, the beating of a heart that should be silent. Why wasn’t he dead? He had been ready, embraced it even. _Jack…_ Where was Jack? If Gabriel had survived, could he have survived? The logical part of him, the part that remained with stark, soul-destroying clarity just how long he had lain there with Jack’s body before he had finally allowed to follow him, knew that it wasn’t possible.

   It didn’t stop him hoping, at least until his attention wandered back to the file in his lap, the last words leaping out at him, a strangled noise slipping out. _Next of kin deceased, the family has been contacted. Arrangements to follow._ Such simple words, ones that he had seen before in various forms and, yet it felt like someone had just torn his heart out of his chest. _Next of kin deceased._ They had listed each other as next of kin long before they had become more than friends, wanting, needing someone who knew exactly what they had gone through to oversee what happened next, even if it meant stepping on their families’ toes. It had been a measure approved by the brass as it protected the SEP, but for Jack and Gabriel, it had been the first step towards becoming something more.

_Jack is gone._

    He knew that it wasn’t proof, after all, according to the files in his hands he should be dead too. However, starring at those four words, he knew…knew that whatever the hell had spared him, had left Jack to die in the rubble of what had been their home, had let him die thinking that he was alone, that Gabriel had abandoned him.

   The file bent and tore as his grip tightened, a howl building in his chest, surging upwards, unstoppable even if he’d had the will to try, bursting out of him in an anguished scream that seemed to fill the room. _JACK!_ He was howling, shrieking, barely aware of the fact that as he twisted and turned under the force of his grief, his body was shifting, fingers elongating and curving, forming sharp talons that rent those four cursed words into tiny scraps of paper. Everything was rising now. Grief. Anger, a fury such as he had never felt and when there was a startled gasp from behind him he whirled, eyes immediately locking onto the woman in the doorway who was staring at him with a terrified expression.

     It wasn’t fair. Deep down he knew that, knew that the woman, a doctor or technician, if her clothes were anything to go buy, had not been the one to take Jack from him, but right now all he wanted to do was lash out. To hurt the world as it had hurt him, and he was unaware of moving, unaware of the way his body disintegrated as he shot forward, still howling out his grief as he was consumed by the need to destroy. And then he was on her, a frenzied swirl of smoke, twisting and turning around her, deaf to her screams and blind to the way her skin turned to ash beneath his touch. He wasn’t aware of the way she fell to the floor in his wake as he was struck by a fresh wave of grief, overcome with the urge to escape, and he fled the morgue in a billowing cloud of smoke, leaving behind a trail of destruction and death, the path of a dead man walking.

     He had no idea where he was going to go, after all, where could he go? There was a vague awareness that something wasn’t right with him, that he wasn’t what he had been…after all how else could a dead man rise…but it was more than that. His home was gone, his friends were scattered, pushed away by the changing times or lost, and he didn’t want to think about how many more had died when Zurich fell. _And Jack…_

And Jack was gone…


	3. Chapter 3

****

Talon Base, Stuttgart

Basement Level: Secure Lab #008: Subject 76 (Report #0067)

    Subject 76 continues to experience difficulty with achieving physical cohesion, especially for protracted periods of time. While it is able to obey detailed instructions, so far it has shown little to no initiative to do anything beyond our orders. On several occasions, we have recorded periods of heightened brain activity and increased heart rate, while we have not been able to verbally confirm our suspicions, we believe that those times correlate with emotional distress. It is our belief that the subject has regained at least part of its memory, and that the emotional distress derives from that fact, however, it has shown no desire to reject the current situation at this time. We shall continue to monitor Subject 76’s behaviour, and make any modifications necessary. In the meantime, we are testing the full limits of its abilities, and attempting to find a way to increase the duration of physical cohesion.

M.D

****

Jack Morrison was dead.

   Jack had decided that the morning following the onslaught of memories, knowing that while there was probably more to come, they were unlikely to change his mind, not after the realisation that Gabriel... His Gabriel, because that was what he was, even with the distance that had crept in between them and the constant arguing… was dead. That realisation had devastated him, but what had made it worse was that Jack who should by all rights have died alongside him, was still alive. It didn’t matter to him that he hadn’t really survived, at least not as the person he had been. Instead, all he could focus on was that he should be dead.

    However, what had really broken what little had remained of his spirit after those realisations, had been the thought that had struck him that morning. The stark realisation that they couldn’t have been the only people that had been caught up in the explosion at Zurich. The base had been busier than usual, almost over capacity he could remember Athena warning him the morning of the explosion, with Blackwatch agents grounded and all leave cancelled, Overwatch missions restricted and investigators and the media crawling all over the place. There had been so many people, and so many of them had been civilians, innocents, caught up in the mess because of his failings…

   As much as he wanted to believe that at least some of them would have survived the blasts that had torn apart the base, he knew that many of them wouldn’t have and even if they had managed to survive, it would have left an irreversible mark on their lives. The weight of that realisation, of those losses on top of all those people he had failed through inaction, through letting Blackwatch have too much free rein, had torn apart what little of him had remained in his grief.

And so, he had given in.

    He had buried what little remained of Jack Morrison as deeply as he could and embracing the fact that within these four walls he was nothing more than Subject 76, and that the only expectation he had to live up to was to obey the orders that were given via the speakers. He was a soldier. He had always been a soldier, even when he had tried to be something more and it was easy enough to lose himself in the routine, to bury himself in his orders. Orders that had only seemed to intensify after the day that he had fallen apart under the influx of memories. Each test pushing him further and further, almost as though they knew what had happened that day and what he needed to keep going, and not for the first time he wondered if there were always eyes on him, even when the voice was silent.

    Before he might have questioned it further, might have bristled at the invasion of privacy and spoken out against it, remembering how much he had hated always being in the public eye as Jack Morrison…as the Strike Commander. Remembering with an even sharper pang how he had envied Gabriel’s ability to slip away into the shadows, always seeming to avoid the spotlight, even when the camera had been on him, and how he had laughed, eyes crinkling as Jack had grumbled at him about it. Now, though he couldn’t bring himself to care enough to speak out against the invasion of privacy, it no longer mattered, and maybe if they watched they would be able to prevent him from failing again. And if nothing else the tests helped to keep his mind off his grief, his mind always trying to wander towards Gabriel if he was left alone for too long, summoning up the memories he almost wished he’d never regained.

Almost.

    He could never bring himself to truly want them to disappear, to go back to being haunted by hazy images, by faces and voices that were just beyond his reach. Because not remembering would have meant that Gabriel would disappear from his world altogether, and as much as it hurt to think of his husband, a dull ache that never faded and burned worse than ever in the moments when he was left alone and undistracted, it was better than forgetting, better than letting him go. It hurt, a sharp, twisting thought that brought tears to his eyes to imagine Gabriel fading away completely and, so he bore the grief, the memories, the pain and tried his best to simply exist, losing himself in the commands, the tests without a word of protest.

**_Form a limb…_ **

    Those orders were among the hardest to obey, because he didn’t want to become solid, didn’t want to exist in a world where he should have died. Where he should be dead. Still, he obeyed because that was what he was supposed to do, his nanites fighting him every inch of the way as he tried to force them into shape. At first, what he got was a grim, misshapen imitation of a human limb, never quite right, almost as though he had forgotten what it was to be human, but gradually they became closer and closer to what they should have been. He almost wished they hadn’t, because like this he could see the unnatural paleness of his skin, so translucent in places that the veins stood out starkly, like streams crisscrossing ice, no trace of the farmer’s tan that had never faded completely even after days spent locked up in his office. And then there were the scars…

    He’d tried to form the limbs without them, but the scars were part of him now, appearing despite his best efforts to remove them. There were thick lines that transected his pale skin, and shiny patches of skin that brought to mind a world of fire and smoke. The first few times he had seen them he had fallen apart immediately, retreating into the safety of his smoke form, and not even the agonising current being forced through his nanites had been enough to make him try again. He still hated the scars, and he still feared the memories attached to them, but with repetition, it became easier for him to push them to the back of his mind and form the limbs. After all, there was no one to see what had become of him or at least no one that mattered. His mind skittering to how Gabriel used to trace each mark that the Omnic Crisis and the battles that had followed had left on his body, worshipping each scar as though it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. _Would he do that now?_

**_Communicate verbally…_ **

That had been difficult too because he didn’t want to speak. He had spent a lifetime speaking, words were supposed to have become his weapon, his shield in a world where he was no longer allowed to just be a soldier, and instead, he had found himself alternating between saying the wrong thing, or saying nothing at all. _Damn it, Jack, you need to speak to me._ How many times had Gabriel pleaded with him to talk to him, to listen to him? To stand up for him, to have his back when the words had first started to fail him, the defences he’d once provided Gabriel and Blackwatch with finally beginning to crumble beneath the weight of the pressure on his shoulders. _Jack, say something…please._

    It had taken him longer to overcome that barrier, punishment ineffective in this case because it had been drilled into him years ago how to remain silent under pain, training that was harder to overcome than he’d ever imagined. He had started with small, one-word answers, forming a mouth for a few seconds to force them out before retreating into the sanctuary of his smoke form. **_Can you continue?_** Yes. **_Is there discomfort?_** Some. There was little need for anything more, and it seemed to be enough to please his testers for the most part, and in the end, he was the one to push himself to say more, not sure why he was bothering but feeling the need to reach out in some way. It was still only a few words at a time, rarely a full sentence. There was no need for more, and so he existed as he was.

**_Form your entire body…_ **

The latter was still a problem. He could manage to do it every few days or so, but it was always a fleeting achievement, the slightest distraction enough to make him dissolve into smoke once more. And the effort itself exhausted him, more often than not leaving him incapable of doing anything else for the rest of the day, something that had not pleased the mechanical voice. He had been punished harshly for that failure in the early days, experiencing a depth of agony that he had never thought possible and while there was a part of him, the same part that loathed himself for surviving when Gabe hadn’t. That thought he deserved it, he had found himself breaking a little further, bringing himself to the edge of begging and pleading with them to destroy for him for good.

_To let him join Gabriel._

   He never voiced the plea though, even when he’d learnt to speak more and not because he hadn’t wanted to, but because he knew that he didn’t deserve that release. Believing deep down, that this cursed existence of his was a punishment for his failures, for the lives that had been lost because of his actions…and inactions…and so he forced himself to endure, letting himself break a little more each day, burying Jack Morrison deeper and deeper with each step forward. Pushing through his limits, slowly growing in strength and skill, even as he lost more and more of himself.

****

He was lonely.

    The realisation had hit him one day as he swirled aimlessly around the room, the closest he could get to pacing in this form. Without orders he didn’t have the willpower or need to pull himself into a more physical form, his full form still eluding him most days, although he had been getting better at forming smaller parts of himself. Enough to hold a weapon, to communicate and the tests had changed to reflect each new development. Finally giving him a sense of familiarity as he was put through his paces against targets, both stationary ones that emerged from the floor, and agile bots that were lowered in from above, darting around him but never quick enough to avoid him as his strength and agility grew. And then there were other targets, living ones.  His mind skittered away from that thought, agitation seeping into his movements as he veered away from the bloody marks in the middle of the floor.

_Don’t think about it…_

    Unfortunately, there was nothing else for him to do, the voice having informed him that morning that there would be no training today as they were meeting to discuss his progress. It was disconcerting to have confirmation that there were more people involved with his training, more people to see him like this, and the thought of them discussing him without his input had left him with an uneasy feeling. However, he easily dismissed the feeling, reminding himself that it didn’t matter. That he didn’t matter, and that all he had to concern himself with was obeying. It didn’t help, and it was as his gaze ventured to the ceiling, now able to easily spot the small speakers embedded in the metal, longing for them to crackle to life, just to break the silence that the realisation crept in.

He was alone, and he didn’t like it.

    He coiled in on himself, trying to pull his nanites into some form of cohesion, trying to feel a little less alone. But he was too agitated now by the dawning realisation that he craved company, that he needed the voice, the orders, that his nanites were refusing to listen to his commands. Or perhaps he didn’t want to be solid, didn’t want to be whole and reminded even more acutely of the fact that he was alone, haunted by the memory of warm arms wrapping around him whenever things had overwhelmed him in the past, strong fingers squeezing his shoulder in support, a gentle clap of the back in passing. _No!_ He gasped, fleeing to the opposite side of the room, as though that would help him escape the memories, although he already knew from experience that it wouldn’t.

_Please._

_I don’t want to be alone._

    Being alone meant being confronted with his memories, and despite his efforts, he could already feel his mind straining towards dangerous territory. Towards Gabriel, and the lingering memory of those warm touches. Towards another time when he had been alone, blood pooling in his mouth and he shuddered. _No. No. NO. Please…I don’t want to think about it. Don’t leave me alone._

    He wasn’t sure what had caught his attention, because there was no noise, nothing to break into his rapidly deteriorating thoughts, but suddenly he became aware of eyes watching him. At once he tensed, swirling defensively, his nanites listening to him just enough to half-form limbs as he looked around wildly, wondering if this was another test. At first, he found nothing, the plain walls unchanged, the entrances to the room as tightly sealed as ever, as though he had any intention of trying to escape. There was nothing there, and yet…

  Something moved in the periphery of his vision, and he whirled, his form losing some of its solidity as he recoiled in surprise as something, or rather several somethings bounced towards him.

   They were small, barely larger than the vintage beanie toys that he and Gabriel had painstakingly hunted down for Fareeha each year. _Don’t think about them. Don’t think about them._ With growing desperation, he focused on the strange creatures coming towards him, jolting as he realised that they were as white and translucent looking as his skin, yet they were undoubtedly solid because he could hear them now, a tiny patter of round bodies bouncing across the metal floor towards him. He retreated again, frightened despite himself as he realised that this was the first contact he’d had with anything beyond the tests. Gaze flicking briefly to the red on the floor before back to the creatures that were pursuing him across the room, seemingly unfazed by the fact that he was coming apart, wisps of smoke filling the air as he backed himself into a corner.

“Stay away…” He hissed, surprising himself as he hadn’t realised he’d formed enough of his features to speak and for a moment the creatures seemed to falter, bouncing awkwardly up and down on the floor, not making a sound. Now that they had paused, he studied them more closely, realising that they were still forming, tiny, beady eyes appearing to stare at him unblinkingly, although they were still silent.

   It was a stand-off, one that they broke first, one of the creatures darting forward, bouncing so rapidly across the distance between them that he had no time to react. Instead, he jolted as it connected with what remained of his arm, feeling a spark go through him at the touch. It felt just like him, comprehension dawning as the creature seemed to merge with him, nanites shifting and making room for the nanites in the creature, threatening to consume it for a moment before it seemed to shake itself and solidify once more, peering up at him through narrowed eyes. There was a vague impression of concern, and he stilled, staring down at it, torn between wanting to push it away and wanting to reach out. In the end, the latter won out and reached out, fingers more smoke than anything now and gently poked it, startled when it leant into the touch, seeming to vibrate against him.

   It was warm he realised and soft to the touch, and strangest of all it seemed to have no fear of him. When he finally looked up, he was startled to realise that the others had moved closer in his distraction, watching him unblinkingly, silently demanding and hesitated before lowering himself to the floor, still more smoke than anything as he assumed a seated position as best he could. He held out his hands, focusing on making them solid, feeling a strange pang of relief when pale fingers formed, still too translucent, but solid enough, the creatures immediately bouncing into them without the slightest hint of hesitation.

    It was like holding a mini furnace, and he found his fingers tightening around them. He could feel himself in them, and although he didn’t understand how it had happened, he knew that they had come from his nanites. Yet at the same time, they appeared to have some level of independence as they jostled amongst themselves, trying to get as close to his finger as they could, and he felt something easing in his chest as he watched them, his earlier agitation setting to a background hum. They were silent, but their warmth was enough, driving out the memories of another sort of warmth and giving him something solid, something real to ground himself with and he found himself having to blink back sudden tears as he realised that he was no longer alone.

****

After that first day, it had taken him long days of practice to learn to form them at will, hindered by the ever-increasing battery of tests that he was being subjected too. This new talent fascinated the voice, and he was made to test it. However, it soon became clear that his ability to create things from his nanites was limited to the strange creatures much to the disappointment of the tester. Although they learned that he had some level of control over them, able to direct them to do simple tasks like fetching a weapon that had been knocked out of his grasp during training, to type in a basic code. They also discovered that his focus was better when he had at least one of the creatures with him, their burning bodies giving him something to ground himself and that he could retain his solidity better during those times.

    It still wasn’t perfect though, and as his training intensified, with more advanced bots being thrown at him, he incurred more injuries as the slightest thing…a comment from the speakers, a shift of the bean, a move that he had learned with Gabriel that sent memories flashing through his mind…could be his undoing, allowing his target to break through his defences as he lost his form. It frustrated him, and it frustrated the voice, the punishments coming faster and harder on the days when his form dissolved and, yet he didn’t know how to fix it, a tiny part of him knowing that he didn’t want to.

   In the end, though the choice had never been in his hands, and a few weeks later he was roused by something hitting the ground beside him, rousing him from a rare peaceful sleep as he lifted his head, tilting it to the side as he took in the pile of black, leathery material. It reminded him painfully of the Blackwatch uniforms, of Gabriel and he recoiled, swirling uncertainty as he glanced at the ceiling, wondering why it had appeared now of all times. Before they had seemed content to leave him with nothing more than the plain black boxers they had provided for the few times he managed to hold his form for more than few seconds. And as much as he hated his body and wanted to hide the scars, the evidence of what he had become from prying eyes, there had never been much point as he spent more time as smoke than anything else.

“Subject 76, please put on the bodysuit.”

    _Why?_ He wanted to ask and nearly did before he got a hold of himself. All he had to do was obey. He stirred, reaching out with smoky fingers to grasp the material, studying it for a moment, comprehension beginning to dawn as he felt how stiff it was. “Now 76.” Apparently, patience was lacking this morning, and he risked a glance up before ghosting forward, not bothering to form himself just yet, seeping inside, filling every inch of the material. It was solid, constraining, and he could feel his nanites beginning to coalesce as they encountered the material at every turn. It was slow, but gradually he felt his body solidifying, easier than it ever had before, until he could stagger clumsily to his feet, staring down at his body with a conflicted expression. The suit hid the worst of the damage from sight, and even as his thoughts threatened to wander, hands trembling as he ran them down his front, he didn’t dissolve, the little bits that fell apart immediately caught by the material.

    It wouldn’t be enough when he was really distracted, he could tell that now, lifting his hand and watching as little wisps of smoke continued to escape from his fingers, but it helped, and slowly he lifted his head once more. Waiting. Sensing a change in the air, and he wasn’t disappointed when the speakers crackled to life once more.

“Subject 76 is ready for the next stage of his training.”

_He wasn’t sure that was a good thing._

 


	4. Chapter 4

Lucerne, Switzerland

     The bedroom of the tiny one-bedroom apartment was full of smoke. However, if anyone had stepped into the room, it wouldn’t have taken them long to realise this was no normal smoke. It didn’t move with the breeze that crept in through the cracks in the window frame, and it remained at the same level, never rising and never falling. That wasn’t to say that it was still. No, it was in constant motion, swirling around the room, coiling in on itself, sometimes to the point where it almost seemed to teeter on the edge of taking physical form before exploding outwards, expanding until it reached all corners of the room. Nor was it as mindless as it appeared, because in the depths Gabriel’s mind still churned, thoughts and memories darting around him, too quick to grasp, or too painful for him to reach for. Yet even as he tried to lose himself in this weird half-existence, there was one thought that he couldn’t escape, one that pierced through the cloud of fluttering thoughts and cut deep.

_Jack was gone…_

    He only had the vaguest memories of fleeing the morgue, of fleeing to this old, disused apartment that he had set up as a bolthole months ago. He had entertained the idea of going further afield, the last remnants of his rational side knowing that it would be safer, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to leave Switzerland. Not yet. However, the decision to come to this hideaway and the journey in his disembodied form were a blur. The only thing he could remember with almost painful clarity was the moment that he had realised that his husband was gone, it was constantly there, eating away at him, breaking him anew and it was why he had made no effort to try and test the limits of this strange new existence. Why he had made no effort to do anything…

_“You need to be more careful,” Jack scolded as he settled into the seat next to the hospital bed, wasting no time in reaching out to take Gabriel’s hand. There were shadows under his eyes, and lines that hadn’t been there a few days before, his fingers trembling as he twined them between Gabriel’s, gentler than Gabriel had ever known him to be. Almost as though he thought that Gabriel would break at any moment, and Gabriel wanted to scoff at the idea. Yet he knew how close it had been this time, even without Angela reading him the riot act the moment she had decided he was well enough to hear it and his gaze darted to the extensive bandages around his midriff, proof that even his enhancements had barely got him through this latest mess._

_“I’m sorry,” he had mumbled, realising that there was no way he could scold Jack for his behaviour or the fact that he clearly hadn’t rested for days, when it had been his own actions that had landed them here, still… “I don’t regret it though.”_

_“Gabe…”_

_“We needed the information Jack,” Gabriel cut him off with a frown, and Jack’s mouth tightened. He couldn’t argue against that, especially when the information that Gabriel had brought back had already allowed them to crack down on four branches of an Anti-Omnic organisation that had been trying to incite tension.  Gabriel thought that he had won the argument, leaning back against the pillows, hissing slightly as the movement jostled his wounds, and immediately Jack tensed, fire entering his eyes, even as he moved to steady Gabriel with a gentle hand._

_“Not at the cost of your life!” It had come out a lot louder than he’d intended, silence spreading through the infirmary and colour seeping Jack’s face as his shoulders slumped.  “Gabe….” He sounded exhausted, but there was a note of something else that had Gabriel couldn’t quite place, and he had a feeling that he didn’t want to as Jack’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”_

_“You’d survive,” Gabriel replied instantly, without the slightest hint of hesitation. “You’d grieve and rage, but eventually you would move on with your life.” He knew better than anyone how strong Jack was, after all, it was how his husband had managed to step up and take centre stage as Strike Commander, even though he had been ill-prepared for everything that the job would throw at him. Losing Gabriel would hurt him, cut him deeply, but he would survive, and eventually, he would live again. He was so sure of this that he missed the tremble in the hand resting against his arm and he nearly missed the quiet mumble that he had a feeling he hadn’t been meant to hear._

_“No, I wouldn’t.”_

       That memory mocked Gabriel now, haunting him in the moments that he gathered his thoughts enough to be conscious of where they had taken him. He had never once doubted that they could both survive without the other, especially when those soothing touches and gentle words had given away to arguments and the insidious distance that had crept in. He had been wrong. Right now, as he shifted restlessly, no longer human…no longer alive, even if his heart was beating… he couldn’t understand how he could have said those words to Jack, how he could have believed for even a moment that they could live without one another. With every breath, every movement, he was starkly reminded of the fact that he was alive, and that Jack wasn’t.

It wasn’t fair.

    A scream. A howl of misery rose, reverberating through every inch of his body and echoing through the otherwise empty apartment. Their apartment… he had set it up as a bolthole, but at the back of his mind, he had always entertained the idea of doing it up, making it somewhere they could escape to, even if just for a night or two. He’d hoped that it would help ease the burden on Jack’s shoulders and maybe bring them closer together.

It would never happen now.

**

    It was several days later before Gabriel even attempted to see if he could take on solid form again. It had been tugging at the edges of his thoughts, in between the bouts of grief so strong that they had threatened to drown him, and the memories that never seemed to leave him be. However, he’d lacked the willpower to act on it before now, because becoming solid, becoming real again, would mean accepting at least on some level that he had to exist in this world. In this world where Jack no longer existed… He didn’t want to admit that. He didn’t want to be alive, and yet beneath that, was a growing, burning need for answers.

Why had this happened?

How had he failed to see this coming?

Why was he alive, when he knew that he had been dead?

Why was Jack gone….?

      It was the last that consumed his thoughts that morning, the gnawing, aching void in his chest giving him something to focus on as he slowly tried to draw the drifting tendrils of his disembodied form back together. It was hard work, the slightest distraction, the slightest shift in his thoughts would see his progress completely undone and on more than one occasion he nearly abandoned the effort. _What is the point?_ It was the memory of flashing blue eyes, and a too loud voice telling him to get off his ass and keep moving forward. To survive. That had him pushing through the struggles, the doubts, drawing each swirling part of himself in once again, gritting his teeth as his body fought him at every stage.   

   Days could have passed for all that he knew, by the time he finally stumbled forward and fell to his knees, gasping, shuddering and frighteningly solid once more. He squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to look at what he had become, not wanting to face the world just yet, his eyes beginning to sting as his fingers tightened against the floor.

_I’m alive._

      Something that he had celebrated countless times over the year. After each battle during the Crisis, especially those missions that had gone wrong or when their tiny team had been whittled down even further. In that backwater inn where they had sat and toasted the end of the Crisis. In Jack’s arms every time they had come home from a mission, against his husband’s lips whenever they made up after each argument. Today, he didn’t want to celebrate, he wanted to scream and shout and curse whoever had decided to let him survive when Jack hadn’t. He didn’t though. Instead he focused on breathing, each breath burning in his chest, a deep, dull ache that seemed to have settled into every inch of his body and it was only when he felt dampness on his cheeks, that he realised he had started to weep, a release that had been denied him in his disembodied form.

     It started quietly, tears just streaming down his cheeks, breath catching in the back of his throat. It wasn’t long before a sob bubbled up as well, and then another and another, and desperately he buried his face against his hands, doubled over against the ground. He didn’t try to stop the sobs, letting them rack his body, broken pleas and apologies slipping out amongst each heaving sob. _Jack… I’m so sorry, Jack…. I should have died…You should be the one that survived…Jack…Jack…JACK!_

    His grief was like a storm, rising and crashing over him, almost carrying him away. However, in the end, it passed on, leaving an emptiness in its wake. Gabriel wasn’t naïve enough to think that was the end of it, the pain, the loss, it was still there, just numbed for a while. However, the same part of him that had allowed him to function as Blackwatch commander even as the world turned on him, and his personal life seemed determined to crumble around him, kicked in now and slowly, reluctantly he pushed himself up, lifting his head.

    There was smoke rising in wisps from his skin, and as he watched patches of skin turned to ash, crumbling away, only to be rebuilt a moment later. _What is this? What am I?_ He had seen some nanite technology that could replicate similar effects, but it had been in its infancy, and there was no way it could have come this far so quickly. He takes a moment to make sure he’s not just going to crumble when he rises, before pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. He feels like he’s stabilising, the wisps of smoke slowly fading away as he stands on shaky legs and just focuses on breathing.

     Eventually he becomes aware of the chill sinking into his skin, and when he glances down he realises that at some point the boxers he had been wearing had been lost, however, he is swiftly distracted, baulking as he realises that wounds that he’d had when he’d woken in the morgue were already starting to scar over. _Nanites._ It had to be nanites, but how? That technology had been limited to only a handful of labs, the main one of which had been in Zurich. Zurich, it reminds him that there are other things to worry about first, and he pushes those thoughts away for the time being and instead takes a lurching step towards the narrow wardrobe in the corner.

    There isn’t much in it, this flat had never been intended for more than a night or two of use, but he finds an old hoodie and some pants and pulls them on, relieved to hide the evidence of what he has been though from sight. He’s careful to avoid looking in the dusty mirror on the side of the wardrobe, not wanting to see what has become of him, hastily closing the door and turning away. He feels sore and stiff, moving like an old man as he hobbles through to the small combined living room and kitchen area, his attention on the tiny, old-fashioned television set in the corner. He’s not entirely how long it has been since the explosion, but if he’s learnt anything about the media since Overwatch formed, its that they love a crisis and he doubts the coverage will have died down that much.

     Still, he falters, finger hovering above the button. He needs answers, more than he needs anything else right now. _Apart from Jack…_ Yet he’s not sure that he’s ready to hear exactly what happened, to learn just how many people he had lost that day.

_I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to you._

    Gritting his teeth, he pressed the button, staggering back until he found the sofa and sinking into it as static danced across the screen for a moment before the signal kicked in. He wished that it hadn’t as the screen was immediately filled with Zurich… although it took him a moment to realise what it was because the base that he had come to call home was gone. The statue of Jack that he had grumbled endlessly about, but secretly loved was toppled, the stone image of his husband blackened and cracked almost beyond recognition and beyond it was little more than a towering pile of rubble. There were remnants of walls, twisted metal frames rising from the concrete and if he closed his eyes, he could imagine the towering walls of windows, the wide, airy corridors.

Gone.

It was really gone.

     He had known that there was no way the base could have endured the explosions he remembered, but he hadn’t expected such total devastation. They destroyed it. Looking at it, it was harder than ever to accept the fact that he was alive because it looked as though no one could have survived that hell.  It took him a moment to realise that the screen had switched to a reporter standing in front of the base, and he frowned, growling with frustration as he realised that it was muted. Before he could even think about getting up to retrieve the controller, smoke rose from his arm, coalescing into a tendril that snaked out and snatched it from its place on top of the television, dropping it into his trembling hands. _What the hell?_ He didn’t want to know he decided, tearing his attention away from the smoke that was slowly curling around his arm and sinking back into his skin, and instead fumbled with the volume button.

_“…Search efforts will continue until the end of the week, although it has been made clear that this is a recovery operation at this stage. No one has been pulled alive from the rubble since the second day of search and rescue, and experts say that it is highly unlikely if not impossible that anyone is still alive and high-tech scans seem to confirm this.”_

     Gabriel was torn, wanting to focus on the implication that some people had been pulled from the rubble alive, at least in the early stages. Instead, he couldn’t help but wonder just how many people had died, how many people were still buried under that rubble, and he shuddered, hand drifting to his side as he remembered when he had been one of them…when Jack had been one of them. _I should be dead. I shouldn’t be here…._ It took everything he had to refocus on the television, his grip on the controller tightening to the point where the plastic creaked in protest as the scene flashed to a large white tent and the rows of trolleys bearing black body bags. How many did we lose…?

_“At this current time identifications are still being made, and it is likely that we may never know the full list of names due to the lack of evidence.”_

       Gabriel knew what that meant, he’d written it in enough reports of his own, especially on the more sensitive missions where they’d had to hide the victim as well as their own actions. He had never baulked, never hesitated, yet today, bile rose in his throat as he stared at the screen. Faces. Names. They all flashed through his mind, friends, colleagues…family…they had all been in that base, and now he might never know their fate. Yet at the same time, he almost wished that Jack was in amongst those unknown names, because then at least he would have something to cling to. That hope would probably have destroyed him eventually, but it would still be better than the all-encompassing grief he was feeling right now. He couldn’t hide in the unknown, Jack’s still features haunting his thoughts.

_“The U.N. investigation into this tragedy is still in its opening stages. However, unnamed sources had confirmed that the inquiry is focusing on the actions of the late Strike Commander Jack Morrison and Blackwatch Commander Gabriel Reyes.”_ It shouldn’t have been a shock hearing that he was also counted amongst the dead, and yet Gabriel still jolted at the announcement, flinching, a bitter noise slipping free. _I wish I were,_ he thought, staring at the photo now filling the screen. It was an old one he realised, entranced by the sight of Jack, this Jack untouched by the stress of the job and smiling, standing tall in his Strike Commander uniform as he held out a hand to an almost smiling Gabriel. It was the day they had officially opened the Zurich base, he realised with a pang, reaching out towards the image, only to let his hand fall into his lap as it disappeared as the reporter continued. _“Currently, the level of their involvement in the destruction of Zurich is unknown. However, they are the key peoples of interest in this investigation. In particular, they will be examining Strike Commander Morrison’s actions regarding the allegations levelled at the organisation with regards to covert operations that had come to light in the days before the base was attacked.’_

What…?

     Gabriel had been too caught up in the image, in the memories of happier times and it had taken a moment for the words to register, a low growl building in the back of his throat as he realised what they were saying. What they were doing. His hands had curled into fists, and he was barely aware of his fingers shifting, smoke rising and forming curved claws that dug into his palms hard enough to draw blood as he stared blindly at the screen.

This is what we get?

      They had given years of their life to protecting the world, endured the hell that had been SEP so that they could do what no one else had been able to do and bring the Omnic Crisis to a close and even then, they hadn’t walked away. They’d accepted the burden of Overwatch, even when it threatened to destroy them, the pressures of the job, the accusations, the media, all of it had come down on their heads, and they had endured. They had died for Overwatch…and now, the world was seeking to lay the blame at their feet? Gabriel didn’t particularly care what they accused him of, he had heard it all before when the backlash against Blackwatch had begun, but Jack…. Jack had destroyed himself to try and keep the peace. His husband had never said it aloud, but Gabriel had seen the moments when his walls had fallen, and he knew that deep down Jack had, had enough, that he had wanted out.

But not like this…

    Gabriel couldn’t fix that, just as he had been unable to reach Jack’s side in time that day. However, as much as he hated the fact that he was alive, for the first time, he found himself accepting it just a little because it meant that he had a chance. He had time to find out who had done this to them, to find out who was really behind the destruction of Zurich…who had murdered Jack…and as he glanced down at his hands, feeling a pang as he stared at the finger where his wedding band should have sat. _Jack…_ his hands clenched tighter, blood trickling between his fingers from the claws biting into his flesh, the pain giving him clarity, stopping himself losing himself in his grief once more and there was determination in his gaze as he lifted his head to look at the television once more, the ruins of Zurich visible once more.

_I won’t let them blame you. I won’t let them forget what you did for them, for us…for me._

 


	5. Chapter 5

Talon Base, Stuttgart

Basement Level: Secure Lab #008: Subject 76 (Report #0073)

    Subject 76 has shown considerable improvement since the introduction of the bodysuit. However, it continues to have difficulty in maintaining cohesion without it and if suitably distracted will lose form even with the suit presence. Once Subject 76 has stabilised further and progressed to an acceptable level, we intend to sample its nanites and see if this issue can be resolved medically. We are continuing to test his obedience and abilities, and the results are beyond our original projections. The nanites have improved the pre-existing enhancements, and we are still seeing growth at this time, although it is expected that the Subject will hit his limits within the next few months.

     Recent surveillance has shown that an unexpected side effect of the synchronisation has allowed Subject 76 to create minor lifeforms from his own nanites. So far, we have been unable to discover a field use for these creatures, but it has been noted that the Subject demonstrates increased focus in their presence and at this time we see no reason to forbid their creation.

M.D.

****

It wasn’t a good thing

      Jack had taken to the soldiering life, like a fish took to water, from the moment he had enlisted. It had been as though he had finally found his place in life, and he had flourished in that environment, quickly attracting the attention of those in command. It was why he had been chosen for the Soldier Enhancement Program, chosen over men and women who had served far longer than he had.

    He had been deadly, even before the SEP enhancements, quick, strong, determined and willing to do what needed to be done and after the enhancements…well the results had spoken for themselves. SEP had given him the tools to do what others couldn’t, and if he had held any doubts or fears about what he was doing, he had pushed it aside, burying it beneath the knowledge that he was fighting for a good reason. That each life he took, each mission he completed was to protect his country, to protect the world…

    However, what he was doing now was completely different. This wasn’t fighting for his country or mankind. What he was doing now was destruction, pure and simple, and despite his best efforts to just lose himself in being ‘Subject 76’ and the orders he was being given, he found himself faltering for the first time in days, his stomach churning as he came to a halt. The unfortunate agent that he had just torn through slipping through his grasp, hitting the ground with a dull thud that seemed to reverberate through his entire body.

     The narrow room was a mess of downed agents, blood pooling across the floor, bullet holes and scorch marks littering the walls from where they had tried and failed to fight him off. He didn’t move to check on them, he didn’t need to, to know that most of them were already dead and that those that weren’t were unlikely to be granted medical help. His blows which had been deadly before were now something else with nanites strengthening each one and granting him speed that no normal person could ever hope to match. The voice that had given him his orders had told him that this was training, but it wasn’t… training was a back, and forth…it was the way that he used to dance with Gabriel on the training mats, learning new moves, perfecting old ones.

_“Got you,” Gabriel had been triumphant as he had pinned Jack against the mat, the grin on his face infectious, and Jack had easily responded with one of his own. It had swiftly morphed into a smirk though as he’d twisted, using all his strength to break Gabe’s grip and surge back to his feet, putting a couple of steps between them._

_“Are you sure about that?” He taunted, feeling a familiar rush as dark eyes lit up at the challenge, Gabriel immediately dropping back into a ready stance as he responded to the dare in Jack’s words._

     He shook his head violently from side to side, trying desperately to drive away the memories, ones so vivid that for half a moment it had felt as though he could just reach, and his fingers would’ve brushed against Gabriel. _Don’t think about it. Don’t think about him._ His form was dissolving, emotions running too high, but the cursed bodysuit that he had been forbidden from removing apart from essentials holding his distorted body together. The air around him was filled with wisps of smoke though, showing that it wasn’t entirely successful at keeping him together, and not for the first time he wished that he had never put the suit on. He wanted to dissolve and fade away from reality, to hide from the memories that were never that far away, and now to hide from what he had done, making a pained noise as he glanced down and saw the glistening blood on the leather of the suit.

This wasn’t training…

It had been a massacre…

_“Damn it, Gabe, what did you do?” Jack had been too tired and too worried to even try and hide his anger this time, gesturing at the pictures laid across his desk. Pictures that his superiors had just dumped on him at an emergency meeting, with the order to deal with the mess before they were forced to step in. He couldn’t let himself linger on the images for more than a few seconds at a time, because if he did then his wavering control might snap and right now that was the only thing keeping them both safe. Instead, he focused on Gabriel, demanding an answer from his husband. Demanding the truth, unable to just let it go this time…pleading for something, anything that would give him a way to protect Gabriel from the backlash that was coming their way._

     H closed his eyes, no longer able to bear the sight in front of him. Was this what Gabriel had felt all those times he’d had to look back at what he had been forced to do in order to fulfil his orders? To do what needed to be done in order to make the world that little bit safer? No, he couldn’t fool himself. This situation and Gabriel’s were completely different, he was different. He hadn’t thought about what he was doing, not even when he had come up short when they had informed him that he would only be ‘training’ against people from now on in preparation for a yet unspecified mission. He had already seen what his nanite-enhanced body could to bots, the thought of using that against a flesh and blood person had left him uneasy, and yet he hadn’t let himself think about it, choosing to empty his mind of everything but the orders coming from above.

_How much of myself have I lost?_

    He didn’t want the answer to that question, knowing that the Jack Morrison who had reluctantly taken on the mantle of Strike Commander…the Jack Morrison that Gabriel had fallen in love with and married, would never have done this. _Jack Morrison is dead,_ he reminded himself sternly, taking a shuddering breath as he fought to get himself back under control, firming up his resolve as he heard the speakers crackling to life above him. He knew what they were about to demand. He knew what their orders would be even before they began, and at that moment, he realised that with these thoughts running through his mind he couldn’t be the obedient soldier who blindly followed orders. Not this time.

“Start Sequence Seventeen.”

“No.”

“No?” There was a note of incredulity in the mechanical voice at his response, the first hint of emotion he had ever managed to draw from them, and he struggled not to flinch, resolve wavering as he caught the undercurrent of anger as it continued. “Subject 76, I think you have mistaken the situation and your position here. That was not a request.”

_I know._

“I’m not doing this anymore,” he whispered, voice trembling, hands curling into fists at his side, fear and uncertainty making his stomach churn. _What am I doing?_ It was the first time in weeks that he’d allowed himself to speak out, to defy them, and he could feel himself slipping, his form threatening to dissolve under the stress, even with the bodysuit trying to hold him together. He almost gave it up then, nearly stopping the next words that slipped out, because what was it going to do? What was going to change? He wasn’t Jack Morrison anymore, it was no longer his duty to try and protect the world, it wasn’t his job to care about other people…about these men and women who had been forced to go against him, and who had fought with their all, not knowing how badly the odds lay against them. All he was supposed to be was Subject 76, a nameless test subject who followed their orders without question, it had been easier that way, but there was a flicker of his old self breaking through, and he couldn’t stop himself from adding quietly. “Not until you can give me a good reason.”

_“Damn it, Gabriel, I’m just trying to protect you,” Jack growled, glaring at his unrepentant husband. It had never been like this at the start. In the early days of Blackwatch, Jack had sat in on many on the briefings, even contributed to them, but nowadays he was lucky if he even knew where Gabe’s agents were operating, let alone what they were investigating. He had let the secrecy slide, knowing that sometimes it was necessary to protect everyone involved, but this time he couldn’t let it go, not with the evidence spread out in front of him and the U.N. and the media circling like sharks.  “But this…” His fingers trembled as he tapped the pictures, desperately trying to ignore the small voice that whispered that there could be no good reason for this, locking gazes with Gabriel as he demanded softly. “You need to give me a good reason for going this far.”_

     It hurt to realise that even now some parts of him hadn’t changed, and he closed his eyes, trying not to think about how Gabriel had tensed at his demand, a flicker of regret and hurt beneath the stormy expression. When he had responded it had been in a harsh, grating tone that had made Jack flinch with each angry word. However, this time his demand had been met with total silence from the voice above him, and he shivered, feeling parts of his body dissolving beneath the suit and he hunched defensively in on himself. _What have I done?_ He knew that it wouldn’t be angry words or a strained distance that he got this time, that wasn’t their way, and he braced himself, waiting for the current to hit him as punishment for his words. It had been weeks since they’d last had cause to punish him and he swallowed nervously, waiting for the pain, but instead, the silence stretched on and on until he started to wonder if he had imagined challenging them.

    He was just starting to think that was the case, or that they just weren’t going to answer him, after all, it wasn’t as though he was in a position to force them to when there was a whirring noise o the far side of the room that had him shifting back in alarm. His eyes scanned the room, preparing for another attack, but instead, he was stunned to see the far wall of his prison slowly retracting, metal creaking and groaning as it moved back to reveal a doorway behind it. The agents had always been lowered in before, and he had honestly started to believe that was the only way in and out of the room, and he was wary now as he stared at the door, not sure what to make of this development, especially when there was no sign of further movement.

     He wanted to ask what was going on, but his voice wasn’t working right then, his nanites barely holding themselves together under the stress and uncertainty and he hesitated. If they had wanted to punish him or terminate him for his disobedience, then they could have done so here and now, without any risk of him escaping, instead…

    There was a gentle nudge against his ankle that had him flinching, ready to lash out as he glanced down, wondering if he’d missed one of the agents. Instead, he blinked as he found the strange, bean-like creature that he had created that morning bouncing against his foot, peering up at him with beady eyes that somehow managed to convey a sense of concern. They still hadn’t learnt to communicate properly, but there was no mistaking its next action as it bounced away from him, heading across the floor, seemingly uncaring of the fact that it was moving through blood and past bodies, before pausing as it reached the door and looking back at him. The ‘come on’ message was as clear as though it had shouted, and he took half a step forward before faltering again, staring at the door once more, not willing to admit just how much the thought of leaving the room terrified him. Possibly even more than the thought of the punishment that might be coming his way, because there was a whole world out there, a world that he was no longer part of.

    However, the creature was bouncing up and down impatiently now, and a minute later the speakers finally crackled to life once more.

“Subject 76, please proceed to the next room if you want your ‘reason.’” There was something in the way they phrased it, and the hint of satisfaction in the voice that scared him. However, he didn’t have the willpower to refuse another order right now, and slowly he drifted forward, more smoke than anything although the suit had made sure he still retained an almost humanoid figure. As he moved, he fought to pull his body back together, reluctant to go up against the unknown, especially one that promised to be dangerous while he was in this state, but with his emotions all over the place, his success was limited.

     The corridor beyond the door was just as bare as his room, giving him no indication of where he was or what he was about to walk into. He glanced back at his room, almost longingly, despite the state of it, but he didn’t turn back. Instead, he crept closer to the wall, sticking to its shadow as he followed the creature who didn’t seem to share his hesitation in the slightest, bouncing down the middle of the floor, completely focused on moving forward.

    It wasn’t long before the corridor widened out into another room, and Jack hesitated in the entrance, noting the other doors that led off from the room and the red lights flashing on their control panels that indicated they were locked. That must mean this was his destination, and his eyes darted around as he searched for some sign of why he had been led here, or for the owner of the voice. However, the room was empty apart from a single chair that was set in front of several large screens that covered the entirety of the far wall, and he frowned, more uneasy than ever. _What is this?_ The urge to turn back was intensifying, his defiance all but forgotten by this point, but instead, he inched forwards, unable to shake the feeling he was about to step into a trap even though his tiny companion bounced inside without hesitation.

_Listen to those feelings, Jack. Those instincts are what will keep you alive._

    Who had said that to him? Gabriel? Or Ana? Both names came with a pang, and he faltered, not wanting to let them down again.

“Please take a seat.” The mechanical voice was back, echoing around him and he flinched, eyes darting around. _Where are they?_ There was a pause, and he waited, shoulders tense as he felt there was something more to this silence, flinching as the speakers crackled before the voice added slowly, deliberately. “Strike Commander Jack Morrison.”

    He froze, heart pounding as he was caught up in a multitude of emotions as the name registered. Any hope that he’d had that he’d successfully managed to distance himself from his past-self dissolving in an instance, leaving him feeling vulnerable. They knew. His breathing was coming hard and fast now, the walls seeming to close in on him, mocking him for ever thinking that he could hide from who he had been. They knew. They knew who he was, who he had been. How? Had they always known? Or had he done something to give it away, his thoughts a panicked blur as he tried to think back, and in the end, he took a trembling step forward, fighting to get his voice to work. “H-How?”

“We recovered you from Zurich knowing exactly who you were,” the voice replied, completely calm, seemingly unaware of the storm it had caused within him. “Now, Strike Commander…” He flinched hard at the title. There was no thought of disobeying this time, and he obediently stumbled forward, the bodysuit beginning to crumble in on itself as he lost more and more cohesion, wisps of smoke rising at an alarming rate.

_Jack Morrison is dead. Jack Morrison is dead. Jack Morrison is dead._

The denials were howling in his mind as he finally reached the chair, but the words had lost their power, and he was shaking uncontrollably as he sank into the seat, losing more and more wisps of himself into the air. There was a fleeting touch against his foot, meant to comfort, before his nanites lashed out, tearing the little creature apart and reabsorbing it, leaving Jack bereft and alone, coming apart at the seams as he slowly raised his gaze to the screens. _I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know what you’re going to show me. I don’t want to hear your ‘reason’…_

    His silent pleas were ignored, the screens flickering to life as though to spite him, and it felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room as every one of them was filled with the image of the Zurich base… or rather what remained of it.

“No…” Logically he knew that there was no way the base could have survived what had happened, and what it must’ve looked like after the explosions had torn through it, but he had avoided thinking about it. Back then his awareness had been limited to him and Gabriel, to the fact that he was alone and dying, and after that, he had tried not to let himself imagine it. He couldn’t avoid it now, losing more and more of himself as his eyes raked over the base that had once been his home. He knew that the film must be old because flames were still devouring the buildings, shadowy figures staggering out of the room as he watched with stinging eyes. He found himself counting them, straining to try and recognise them, a task made impossible by the smoke and the fact that they were covered in dirt and soot, but he knew that there weren’t nearly enough people…. not after the numbers that he knew had been in the base that day.

“At this point, four hundred and sixty-four people have been identified amongst the dead, there remains an estimated two hundred left to be identified.” _No,_ Jack buried his head in his hands, no longer able to bear the sight of the burning base. _So many people._  He had known most of them, had made it his mission to get to know the men and women under his command and not just names, he had taken time to learn about their families, about their hopes. How many of them were gone? Lost to his failures? He didn’t want to know, but the voice wasn’t finished. “The number of those missing is still rising, and at least one hundred and thirty individuals have received life-changing injuries.” There was no real emotion in the voice as it listed the numbers, simple statements of fact that had Jack reeling with each additional number, but he couldn’t help but feel there was a touch of smugness in the next words. “Amongst those counted as fatalities were Blackwatch Commander Gabriel Reyes and Strike Commander Jack Morrison.”

_Gabe,_ there was a pang at hearing it confirmed, especially in such an emotionless way and his fingers tightened, tugging at his hair as he used the pain to stop himself losing it completely. It was numbing to hear that he was also considered dead, but some part of him had already realised that must be the case, after all, how else would they have been able to keep him here all this time without someone trying to retrieve him?

“I…” The words caught in his throat, what was there for him to say? _Gods,_ he choked, eyes burning as he desperately fought back the tears. He had known how bad it had to have been at Zurich, had known that the losses would be high…but so many…he closed his eyes, faces and voice flashes through his mind, memories of friendly chats in the corridors, meals shared in the large commissary, stories shared. All those lives and futures that he had been responsible for.

_I failed._

“Investigations are continuing; however, it is looking increasingly as though Strike Commander Morrison and Blackwatch Commander Reyes are to be held responsible for this incident and the resulting loss of life.”

“No!” He lifted his head with a growl at that news, eyes widening as the screens switched, bile rising as he watched the news reports, the headlines that flashed across them, their names and the accusations vivid in black and white. “We…” He faltered, unable to absolve himself of guilt, knowing that his failures were responsible for this mess…but Gabriel…his voice hardening. “Gabriel wasn’t to blame for what happened… he…” _He died because of me._

    There was no response to his words, but the screens continued to scroll through the various news reports, the accusations and rumours, the lists of names, too many of them leaping out at him, and as much as he wanted to look away, he couldn’t pull his eyes away. He didn’t deserve to. The tightness in his chest was increasing by the moment, as for the first time since he had regained awareness in that tiny room he learned about what was happening in the outside world, what he had left in his wake. He wished that he had never pushed the matter, that he had never asked. Guilt and grief warring for dominance as he watched everything that he had worked for crumbling.

    The declaration that Overwatch had been disbanded and that all agents were to avoid any future activities that could be associated with the organisation, was particularly crushing, as deep down he had believed that Overwatch itself would survive. That it would still be there, fighting on without him, continuing its mission. But it was gone, it was all gone.

    Everything that he and Gabriel had fought so hard to build, everything that they had struggled to protect… it was gone…and they were being blamed for it.

“Why are you s-showing me this now?” He whispered. They could have made up a reason, could’ve told him anything to gain his obedience as he would have had no way to refute it, so why go to this level? Why show him all of this and potentially risk giving him a reason to fight them? Because he could feel it, just a weak flicker deep inside him, a part of him that refused to die that was stirring, wanting to fight, that wanted to show the world that it still needed Overwatch.

That wanted to clear Gabriel’s name.

“It was to demonstrate to you that there is nothing for you beyond this.” The voice replied, amused and he wanted to snarl at it, his defiance flickering to life once more, but the fight drained from him with its next words. “The world no longer needs or wants Jack Morrison. And considering the current situation, if they were to discover that you are alive…” He wasn’t naïve, not anymore, and he knew that the moment the world realised he was still alive, that he had survived Zurich when so many innocent people had died, then they would tear him apart. It wouldn’t matter that he had helped keep them safe for so long, all they would see was the accusations and his survival. He swallowed, they had already destroyed everything he had worked for, already pinned the blame on him and Gabriel, and he didn’t want to imagine what they would do if they had him in his grasp. He had no argument, nothing to refute those words and the next words silenced him completely. “And if they were to learn what you have become.”

  _What you’ve become._

     His mind darted to the bodies piled in the room behind him, to the blood staining his clothes and the smoke rising from him in wisps.

    There was a low, keening noise filling the room and it took him a few seconds to realise that the sound was coming from him, bubbling up as the weight of reality crashed down on him. He couldn’t stop the noise, didn’t even bother trying, the pain too much for him to bear in silence.  Because he knew that the voice was right, that the would never be able to accept him like this. Hell, he hadn’t accepted himself like this, mind constantly skittering away from the issue when he tried to think about it, but he knew that it would be worse out there. He had seen the backlash, the outrage over some of the experiments that had been run on their agents, even if it had been to save their lives. The horror when SEP had been made public, and the way that people had looked at him and Gabriel with a hint of fear and something akin to revulsion that hadn’t bee present before that announcement.

    Yet he knew that all of that paled in comparison to whatever it was that he had become, and that was the final blow, everything overwhelming him as he lost all cohesion, seeping out of the body suit and fleeing back to his room.

He didn’t want to hear any more…

He couldn’t bear to see any more…

    There was no place for him in the world anymore, not as he was, not after his failures…and what the had cost. It wasn’t what he had wanted for a reason, but it was an answer all the same. There was nothing else for him to do but accept his situation and obey, it was what he deserved and what was the point of fighting it? Of suffering for some misplaced need to protect people from what he had become when the world itself had turned its back on him.

On Gabriel…


	6. Chapter 6

Lucerne, Switzerland

    Gabriel had never been great at being patient, it was a skill he had honed over the long months of the Omnic Crisis where they could be waiting for days or weeks to advance on a target, and he’d perfected it during his time with Blackwatch. He had learned to sit and wait for hours, for days, knowing what needed to be done, but also knowing that there was a time to act. However, right now as he paced back and forth across the tiny living room, smoke rising from him with each step, it felt like all those skills had deserted him, each news report, each accusation, each mention of Jack’s name pushing him ever closer to the brink of recklessness.

He wanted to make them pay.

He wanted them to know how it felt to watch their world crumble.

     There were many things he wanted, many things that he wished he could change, but most of them were impossible and out of his control, a realisation that only fuelled the fury that had been driving him for days. It exhausted him and left a foul, ashy taste in his mouth, but it was easier to focus on the anger, the burning loathing he felt for everyone who was trying to blame them for this mess, anything but the ever-growing ache that came from losing Jack. The almost physical pain that came each morning when he opened his eyes to find himself in this cramped, abandoned apartment that held no trace of his husband, he’d missed Jack for so long, but this was different. Before he’d always had the comfort of knowing that Jack was out there, alive, reachable…now…now there was nothing but an ache in his heart, and an empty, pale stripe on his ring finger.

    He might have given in to the temptation to act rashly, to rush out and try and get his revenge were it not for the constantly shifting state of his body. Just as he thought that he had got the hang of his new body, it would fall apart on him, leaving him a rolling, swirling mess of nanites in the middle of the room. It hadn’t taken him long to link it with moments of high emotion when his grief and pain had grown too much for him to bear. He was getting better though, spending more and more time solid, focusing on his anger and hatred had helped, the emotions helping to ground him physically as well as emotionally and as he stabilised he had started to practice.

    He might dislike this strange, new form, but he could see its potential, and with the odds stacked against him, he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in his mouth. He knew that there might be a few people out there who could, and would help him, his thoughts briefly drifting to Jesse McCree who’d had enough of the backlash against Blackwatch and wisely got out before it had gone to hell, but he quickly dismissed it. He didn’t know how deep this corruption, these lies went, and while he couldn’t imagine his agent betraying him, he couldn’t risk it. Besides… Jack had been his husband, his everything. It had to be his hands that fixed this, that wrung the truth out of those trying to point the blame at them and the life out of those who had dared take Jack from him.

And so, he waited.

     Days passed as he fought to discover the limits of his new body. It was slow going, the nanites fighting him every step of the way. But he made progress, learning to shift between solid and mist, although it was certainly easier to dissolve into smoke than it was to pull himself back together and he lost three days trapped in a weird in-between stage. It had been during those three days stuck in limbo, that he had stumbled upon another skill when bored he had tried to see if he could form the nanites into other things. He had startled small, making a tiny hard ball and gradually increasing it in size until it was the size of a basketball.

_And gods…_

_That reminded him of Fareeha, of the all the times he and Jack had taken her down to the recreation area and taught her to shoot hoops. In the beginning, they’d had to lift her, giggling and squirming towards the hoop and Gabriel had lost count of the number of times one of them had taken a small foot to the face. There was nothing like having to explain to your agents how you’d ended up with a black eye when you hadn’t been on a mission or within the training rooms for days. Later, as she had grown, they had no longer needed to lift her, watching as she grew stronger and quicker, still no match for enhanced soldiers but able to hold her own. And he could remember Jack’s nonplussed face the day she had swung herself up by grabbing his shoulder and dunked the ball into the net with so much force that the net had come away from the wall. Ana had been mortified, Jack shocked, and Gabriel had just stood there laughing his head off as Fareeha muttered frantic apologies._

   That had been the last time he had made a ball. Those memories… they hurt too much, they reminded him of how much had been lost, even before Zurich. He had no idea where Fareeha was, ashamed to admit that he didn’t even know if she had been on the base when it had been attacked, he prayed that she hadn’t, unable to bear the thought of another loss. Of losing another bit of Ana, another bit of Jack. Because his husband had loved the little girl, and Gabriel had seen the longing looks and knew that Jack had hoped that they would one day be able to have a family of their own…they both had…and he couldn’t help but wonder if Jack had held onto that dream even until the end.

     His experiments changed. As he gradually pulled his body back together, he started trying to craft clothing…armour…from the smoke. At first, it had been transparent, fleeting, dissolving under the lightest touch. However, the more he practised, the stronger it became, and the easier it became to cloak himself in it. The first few times the clothes he formed were a dark, smoky grey, almost black in places, reflecting what they made of and he supposed that it was appropriate. A dead man walking, grieving his husband and wearing black, it was almost poetic.

But no, his grief was private.

   He wanted the world to see his rage, not his grief. His marriage to Jack had been well known, there had been no way of hiding it considering how much Jack had been in the limelight and to be honest he had never wanted to hide it, hell, the day they had married he had all but been screaming it from the rooftops. But they had both fought to keep their relationship as private as possible, and Gabriel wanted to honour that, wanted to honour the memories, the feelings that those screaming accusations at them had no knowledge of, and no right to learn about.

    The next time he formed his clothes and armour they were white. The smoke and darkness were still there, little clouds that occasionally danced across the armour when his grief broke through the rage. He liked the white. The more vengeful part of him liked the thought of blood decorating the white, an offering to Jack’s memory, even if he knew that his husband would have been horrified at the idea.

    Next had come weapons. That had been harder than he had anticipated, they were more solid, more complex structures and it had taken long hours of hard work to even form a tiny shuriken that reminded him painfully of Genji. However, it wasn’t enough. Cold sweat beaded against scarred skin, he never ran warm these days he found, trembling, smoke rising in drifts from his skin as he fought to create something more. His concentration nearly broke when the weapon that was slowly forming in front of him threatened to take on the painfully familiar form of a pulse rifle, his breath catching in his throat…

_“What are you doing?” Gabriel asked, keeping his approach cautious as he stepped into the training room, knowing better than to catch Jack unawares. They were both a little jumpy these days, old habits and memories from the Crisis warring with the constant threat that seemed to snap on their heels, even though they were supposed to be at peace. It was why he was surprised to find Jack down here, heavy pulse rifle in hand as he blasted through one of the harder simulations, rather than up in his office wading through the reports and demands for statements that were pouring in endlessly at the moment._

_“Training.” Jack’s terse reply told Gabriel all he needed to know, and he stepped back, lifting his hands to show he wouldn’t interfere and watched as Jack worked through the rest of the simulation. The months of office work hadn’t dimmed his reflexes in the slightest, and Gabriel drank in the sight of his husband at work, willing to admit to himself at least that he missed having Jack at his side in the field. His agents were good, he had made sure of it. But Jack… Jack was on a different level, and beyond that, Gabriel trusted him beyond anyone, the two of them moving as one._

_He was almost sad when the simulation ended, the last bot collapsing to the floor with the spark of broken wires. However, his attention was drawn to the slump of Jack’s shoulders and the weariness in the blue eyes when his husband turned to look at him, although his grip on the weapon in his arms remained as firm and steady as ever. “I miss it…”_

     They could have done something. Made Jack’s job more bearable, let him get back in the field, maybe it would have stopped the distance that had crept in between them. Gabriel snarled, and his attention snapped back to the half-formed weapon the table. He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about what was lost. He wanted to focus on what he could do now, and for that he needed tools, starting with weapons. Guns. He remembered McCree and Genji laughing at his loud, flashy shotguns, at least until they saw how deadly he was with them. He needed that skill now, and he closed his eyes. _Please._

    It felt like he was squeezing himself through a tight tube, feeling the pull as the nanites separated from him, coalescing around the ones that were already in the gun. Long minutes passed, and he could feel exhaustion creeping up on him, but he persevered. Time was running away from him, the accusations taking hold and he knew that he had to act, sooner rather than later.

  There was a dull clatter, the sound of metal hitting wood and slowly he opened his eyes, scared of another failure. Instead, a slow, grim smirk spread across his lips as he took in the pair of deadly shotguns now resting on the table, reaching out to run his fingers over them. They were solid beneath his touch, and he traced the patterns that had formed without his intention. It was only the first step though, he knew that he needed to practice more.

But it was a start, and he laid his hand on top of the guns again.

“We have work to do.”

**

   Over the next few days, he constantly practised, pushing himself to the edge, again and again, collapsing into bed each evening, too tired to even dream. Or at to tired to remember them, which was a blessing, because when he slept his anger could no longer protect him, and Jack haunted every inch of his sleeping world.

    With each day it got easier to form the guns, and faster until they were barely a thought away. He still practised, but now he turned his focus to gathering information, spending long hours forcing himself to watch the news reports. Re-watching them over and over, until he was sure that the hateful words, the false accusations, the growing list of names, were all imprinted on his memories. He had notes, leads, although he doubted that many of them would lead to anywhere useful, but he needed more, and for that, he needed to face the outside world.

No.

He needed to face Zurich.

****

   Gabriel was little more than a shadow as he materialised just inside the crude barrier that had been set up around the ruined remains of Zurich. It took him a moment to recover, he remembered seeing the barricade and the soldiers patrolling it and cursing as he didn’t want to cause a scene even if it would easy enough to force his way through, and the next moment he had shifted. It hadn’t been like the times he’d lost control and dissolved unintentionally, this time there was a focus, a goal, and in the blink of an eye, he had found himself solidifying on the far side of the barrier. _What the hell was that?_ Just how much did he still have to learn? And…

    His thoughts trailed off as he slowly lifted his head to look up at the ruins, and suddenly it felt like there wasn’t enough air in the world. He had known that it was bad, had seen the images on the news, both of the fires that had been ripping through the buildings in the wake of the explosion and of the empty, ruins that had been left behind. It didn’t compare to seeing it in person, and his legs quivered beneath him, threatening to cave beneath him as he took a wobbling step forward.

_Gone._

_It’s really gone._

   Somewhere, deep inside he had still been naïvely clinging to the hope that something would have survived. That there would have been some remnant of his old home, his old life to come back to… that he hadn’t lost everything. Standing in front of Zurich now, he felt that hope shrivelling in his chest because nothing had survived beyond the odd wall here and there, rubble had already been scrapped aside into piles, the remains of Jack’s stupid statue had been broken up and were waiting to be hauled away.

    Looking at it now it was hard to envision how it had been. All glistening windows and clean walls. He remembered he had laughed when he had seen the designs for it, they both had, remembering the poorly equipped bases and rambling safehouses they’d been forced to rely on during the Omnic Crisis. It had seemed like a whole other world, one that he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to fit into. But he had. At some point, those pristine corridors and rooms had taken on a warm, lived in feeling, flooded with the lives of the agents that lived and worked there.

_Ana’s room which had always been neat, even with the hurricane of activity that was Fareeha, the kitchen window ledge filled with boxes of tea. Those rooms had grown colder after her death, but both Gabriel and Jack had still considered them a sanctuary, remembering all the afternoons spent playing with Fareeha, Ana’s laughter and scolding still ringing in their ears._

_McCree’s room which had been so bare to start with, the kid afraid to make it his own, certain that it was going to be taken from him at some point. It had been Jack who had snuck in one day and left a pile of paint cans, random souvenirs picked up from around the world and a one-word note ordering McCree to ‘decorate’. Two days later when Gabriel arrived with a potted Cactus in hand, hoping that the kid wouldn’t manage to kill it, the room had been a warm yellow, every surface covered in clutter and for once McCree had looked like felt as though he belonged there._

_Genji had never had that reservation, even at his angriest and most destructive, he had taken his room and made it his own. Gabriel had guessed that it was a through back to his time with the Clan, where his every movement, every choice had been dictated. Now he went wild, the small room a mish-mash of cultures, bonsai growing on the window ledge, while posters covered the walls, America and Japan equally represented. Gabriel had shrugged and made sure to leave a couple of posters that Fareeha had helped him pick out, outside Genji’s door and a couple of weeks later there they were, pasted on the wall with the rest._

_Their quarters had been his favourite though. They were larger than most but simple. Neither of them was used to having their own private quarters after so long in SEP and the Crisis, and it had taken them weeks to get used to the fact that this space was theirs. Gabriel was the first to buy stuff for their rooms, just basic things for the kitchen and bathroom, throwing out the plain things that had come with the place, adding little touches of colour and personality. Jack had laughed at the matching toothbrush holders and scowled at the mug that had his photo printed on it and the next week Gabriel had come home to find some of their favourite photos lovingly framed and set out on the sides. It had snowballed from there, until one day they had returned to their rooms, exhausted after training and Jack had paused when they stepped inside, a slow, incredulous grin spreading across his face as he turned to Gabriel._

_“It’s really our home now…”_

Gone.

    All of that, all those memories destroyed in an instance, and Gabriel snarled, eyes burning as he stared at what remained of the life had taken for granted. He had lied to himself he realised, telling himself that he was coming here for answers, but there was nothing to be found in these ruins. No signs screaming at him where to go, no names etched into the rocks, and he had known that there weren’t going to be. That there was nothing to be found in Zurich but ghosts…

It was why he’d come.

    After all, he was a ghost too, a wraith standing on hallowed ground, shadows dancing across the white of his coat and armour. He hadn’t come for answers. He had come to make a promise. To himself. To Jack. To every person who had lost their lives in Zurich.

_I will find the answers._

_And then they will pay…_

**

    He cleared out the apartment that night. He wouldn’t be coming back, it was too close to Zurich, too close to the ghosts, and the future he had dreamed of sharing with Jack here was gone. He burned all the notes he’d made, all evidence of his existence and left with nothing but the clothes on his back, and the promise he’d made ringing in his ears. As he stepped outside, he lifted a hand, slowly dragging it across his face, nanites forming and solidifying under his fingers, until the heavy weight of a mask settled over his skin.

It was time to start the hunt.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Talon Base, Stuttgart

Basement Level: Secure Lab #008: Subject 76 (Report #0098)

   It has been a month since Subject 76 was informed about the events at Zurich. In this time, we have seen no further signs of defiance. All orders have been carried out promptly and without complaint, regardless of physical and emotional state. Subject 76 has now completed all aspects of the training regime devised, and the results have been off the charts. All that remains is the trial mission scheduled for the day after tomorrow, to ensure that the training and conditioning remains in place outside out the lab.

   The agents selected to accompany Subject 76 on this trial mission have been fully briefed, and they had been instructed to use any means possible to contain Subject 76 if it demonstrates any intention of disobeying orders or betraying Talon. However, at this stage, we feel those precautions will not be needed, and we are looking forward to the successful conclusion to his training. 

    In terms of Subject 76’s physical state, its condition seems to have reached a plateau. Since then we have tested various methods, trying to increase the cohesion of his nanites. However, so far, no methods have achieved more than a marginal improvement. Therefore Subject 76 is still largely dependent on the bodysuit to maintain physical cohesion for prolonged periods of time. We have improved the material, and with training Subject 76 has learnt to keep the suit with him even when shifting, although this is limited to short distances. This is an area that we will continue to work on, and I am confident that we will be able to perfect it before the next subject is brought in.

M.D.

****

_I am no one._

     He was little more than a shadow as he slipped through a gap in the outer fence surrounding the massive industrial complex that was his target, paying no heed to the security warnings plastered along the chain links, dissolving into smoke as soon as he was through and gliding over the ground towards his target. The sensation still left a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, that feeling of being less than human but as with many things he had learned to bury that feeling, to seal it away behind a mask that would probably have fooled Gabriel these days.

_Gabriel._

    He hastily wrenched his thoughts away from that dangerous path, speeding up, pushing his body to the limit and it wasn’t long before he was forced to slow and focus on holding himself together, his nanites fighting to escape the confines of the body suit even in this form and threatening to break off in a dozen different directions. He couldn’t afford to fall apart out in the open. No, he couldn’t afford to fall apart at all, because he knew that this was a test even if those words hadn’t been used within his hearing. It was why he was moving across the ground on his own, even though other agents were fanning out behind him and he took a deep breath, casting his mind about for something else to think about.

Training. Training was easier to think about these days, even with the amount of blood that he knew he had now had on his hands, the lives that he had taken that would once have haunted him, now just another scar to bear.

    The month that had passed since the day that they had allowed him to find out about what had been happening in the outside world had passed in a blur. After seeing what the world had chosen to believe about Gabriel, and to a less extent about him because in his mind that paled in comparison to the lies they were whispering about his late husband, in the wake of those painful revelations, he had been unable to cling to even a shred of his defiance. What was the point? Why should he try and fight for people who refused to fight for them? Why should he suffer, to protect people who had thrown their protection back in their faces? The bitterness was new, and it twisted its way deeper and deeper, destroying what hesitation he’d had left about what he was being asked to do in the lab, and he took to working through each training session with a brutal ferocity that should have horrified him but instead had just left him feeling numb.

Empty.

A Blank Slate.

    He’d thought that he’d buried what remained of Jack Morrison before that day, and yet what he had felt then was nothing compared to the void that had opened in the wake of those revelations, the vast nothingness in his chest. The only thing that could seep into vast space was thoughts of Gabriel, but even they felt distant, dulled and tainted by the bitterness that had taken hold of him, although those thoughts and memories still hurt and threatened to send his body into a meltdown. Everything else just washed over him.

    He had refused all names, even ‘Subject 76’ once he had been offered the choice and it had been the one flare of stubbornness he had allowed himself, not that his trainers had pushed the matter if anything they seemed pleased by his choice. He didn’t care. He just didn’t want a name. He didn’t want to be anyone, not any more. All he wanted, if you could call it a ‘want’ was to be the soldier they had moulded him into, no…he was less than a soldier because soldiers could question orders, they could have minds of their own. _Gabriel…_ No, he had become a weapon. A deadly weapon, but blunt unless pointed at a target and tonight would be his first chance to show that, to prove it to his trainers and to that tiny part of himself that still fought to retain some sense of self, although its voice had been growing weaker and weaker as the days passed.

    Calmer now, he felt his body stabilising once more, although he knew that it wouldn’t take much to set it off again. It was one thing they hadn’t been able to fix, something that gave him a perverse sense of relief because he knew that if they had fixed him, he would have been able to feel more human… more alive…both of which terrified him. No, it was easier to remain like this, this strange, half and half existence was all that deserved and all that he needed.

As long as he could complete the mission.

    He could feel the eyes watching even now as he ghosted across the ground, the gazes that were burning into him from a safe distance, watching, waiting to see if he took a single step out of line. To make sure that he didn’t betray them. They had been watching him since he had stepped out onto the runway back at base. Not that he could blame them, because he had very nearly gone to pieces there and then on the concrete. It had been the first time he had been allowed outside since he had woken in the lab, and for a few minutes he’d been overwhelmed by the onslaught of sensations, made a thousand times worse by the nanites who amplified every sound, every slight ripple in the air. There had been wisps of smoking rising from his skin, and only a sharp order had got him moving on the plane, and he spent the journey trying to ignore the other agents as he retreated to a corner, surrounded by a growing cloud of smoke.

     It had been easier the second time, and while his senses were still on hyper-alert he had been calmer when they had disembarked, and yet still they watched, waiting for him to break again.

    A quiet part of him wondered what they would do if he did, after all, in all those weeks of training and through countless simulations, not one of them had managed to come close to stopping him. They could injure him, but minor wounds were healed in a matter of minutes by the nanites shifting under his skin, and even the deeper, more serious wound they had managed to give him on occasion had only slowed him down for a day, and no matter how badly wounded he had been, he had always come out victorious.

    He was almost tempted to test what they would do. Almost. He knew that he wouldn’t go through with that thought, even if the risk hadn’t been so high, because the spark of defiance that might once have spurred him to try was long gone. Destroyed, along with everything else.

    Instead, he turned his attention to the mission ahead, focusing on the complex that was now looming above him, retreating into the safety of his orders once more.

_Retrieve the data files. Deal with any forces that get in your way, utilising all abilities._

    The last bit made him falter for the briefest second because he had come a long way in the last few weeks, especially as they had worked tirelessly with him to refine the material of his bodysuit so that he could take it when he needed to shift into smoke. It would only work over short distances, his focus still not good enough to hold his body together at the best of times and for long distances it simply wasn’t possible, and he was forced to abandon it. Even now he could feel his nanites starting to lose their grip on it, and he sped up, wanting to reach the shelter of the building so he could solidify in relative safety. Still, while it was still an inconvenience, the fact that he could carry it over short distances was another weapon in his arsenal…another tool to be used against the unsuspecting security force that was ahead of him.

They wouldn’t stand a chance.

    Yet, he didn’t hesitate or feel the slightest bit of pity for them. In the past Jack Morrison would have given thought to the fact that his opponents had family and friends waiting for them, even the Omnics that he had fought at the height of the Crisis had some ties. But, that man was gone, and he felt no remorse or pity for what was about to happen. If anything, there was faint anticipation beginning to stir as he crouched in the shelter of the building and began the arduous process of reforming himself and the body suit into two separate, distinctive parts. It was a fight as always to get his nanites to obey, and he was relieved because it distracted him from that unwelcome anticipation, not quite excitement, but rather a feeling that he was finally going to fulfil his purpose.

After all, a weapon was made to fight.

_To kill._

    It was a thought that would have given him pause in the past, but now he didn’t even flinch, focusing on slowly reforming each limb in turn. There was a faint stirring against the side of his neck, where his mask dipped just below his ear, and he tilted his head, watching as several wisps of smoke broke away and slowly curled into a bean-like shape that slipped down to land on his shoulder, beady eyes meeting his gaze. Just feeling that lightweight helped him finish the task of pulling himself together, the knowledge that he wasn’t completely alone soothing an ache that he didn’t want to think about. However, it was not without cost, as the strange creatures had started to change as well over the last few weeks and on occasion they had reflected the emotions he had refused to let himself show. It was a weakness, one he could ill afford when people were watching his every move and, yet he couldn’t bring himself to stop forming them and half the time his nanites seemed to take the decision out of his hands.

_“Subject 76, status report.”_

     He flinched at the sudden sound by his ear, surprised and relieved that the nanite-based communicator had survived the journey. He reached for it, letting his nanites brush it as he had been ordered, allowing them to ensure that he was the one replying. Although he doubted anyone else would even know the device was there as it was barely bigger than a pinhead and hidden against the black of his bodysuit, still he hadn’t argued, and he didn’t hesitate to reply now, his voice still raspy and quiet from lack of use.

“I’m about to enter the premises,” he reported.

_“Acknowledged. Subject 76 proceed as ordered and remember the perimeters of your commands.”_ He grimaced at the name, not recognising the voice and not speaking out against it, uncertain if that too was a test of his obedience, although he couldn’t quite keep the edge out of his voice as he replied.

“Understood.” He ended the communication, although it would be the work of seconds if they wanted to continue speaking to him, but thankfully the device remained silent, although the feeling of being watched intensified and he knew that his keepers were waiting for him to act. Absently he reached up, brushing his fingers over his companion, using the touch the ground himself before he straightened, all traces of hesitation and irritation fading.

It was time.

_I am no one._

****

They hadn’t stood a chance.

     He’d always had a good memory for floorplans, something that Gabriel had cursed him for on several occasions, usually when his husband had wound up relying on him to be his guide on a mission that he hadn’t even been supposed to know about. _Don’t think about that…_ he growled, cursing his thoughts for constantly fighting him. It had been easier in the lab, when there was nothing but his own memories to remind him of the other man, but out here…on a mission….it was harder to keep it at bay, and he could feel his nanites beginning to drift again, only to find their escape being prevented by the rigid material of the bodysuit. The urge to pull himself back together completely, to seek the comfort of being solid before continuing was tempting, but it would waste time, time he could ill afford with all the eyes waiting to see if he would fail and, so he forced himself to move forward.

   Instead of focusing on the way his body was shifting, the suit crumpling in places only to rise a moment later when the nanites realised they couldn’t escape completely, he mapped out the route he needed in his head, one that would take him directly to his goal with no unnecessary delays. One that would take via the main security features that he had been shown in the briefing, sternly quashing the flicker of emotion at the thought of the people he was going to fight, not sure whether it was pity of anticipation at this point.

     He moved along the corridor, making no effort to hide from the cameras. After all, they would know he was here soon enough, and he had seen his reflection. He had seen what he looked like in the bodysuit and mask and he doubted that even someone who had known for years would recognise him, so there was no need to fear that anyone would realise that he and Jack Morrison had once been one and the same.

_Once._

     It was getting easier to push those thoughts away as he moved further along, sharp ears picking up the faint movement of booted feet up ahead. They had done a good job of muffling any alarms, and he knew that if he had been a normal agent, he might have been caught out, as it was he continued as though he hadn’t detected their presence. The churning emotions had settled once more, as everything in him shifted to a narrow focus on what lay ahead, his fingers curling up at his side as he focused. He hadn’t been allowed a proper weapon for this mission, partly to make it easier for the agents if they had to take him down in the event that he disobeyed, but also so that he wouldn’t be tempted to rely on bullets rather than his nanite enhancements.

Still, they hadn’t forbidden him from all weapons.

    Focusing he grasped a wisp of nanites, letting them seep through the tiny slit in the glove that had been made for this purpose and slowly, carefully moulding them into the shape of a small knife, one that would easily be concealed in the palm of his hand. It was about all that he could manage despite the long, arduous hours he had spent trying to develop this skill and even now, making something so small left him with a sharp pain just above his ear. It was easier to make vast numbers of the little nanite creature that had now hunkered down against his shoulder as it picked up on the battle to come than it was to form more solid constructs, something that his trainers had been disappointed about. Still, despite its small size, it banished the last hint of hesitation from his mind, the doubt that came from being a soldier who knew from painful experience how dangerous it was to go in unprepared.

_You were at Zurich…_

      There was no chance for that thought to take hold because just as he took a final step forward, the guards who had been moving into position ahead of him opened fire.

At nothing.

    The nanite-enhanced hearing had allowed him to catch the brush of fingers of metal, the sound of triggers being pulled and in a heartbeat he had disintegrated, becoming smoke once more. He felt the burn of the bullets as they sped through the cloud that had been his body, the heat making his nanites part to let them through, but there was no pain. He allowed himself a second to regroup, fighting back the thought that if they’d had these abilities sooner, they might both have survived, before he surged forward, letting his body spread out further, making the cloud appear larger than it was.

     They were well armed for security guards, although he understood why when he noticed the helix symbol next to the simple black pyramid of the German Security company, Scild, who supposedly owned and ran the complex. Suddenly, the mission made more sense, as did the order to use all his abilities. On a simple mission, with normal security guards there would have been no need, but Helix had made a name for itself for having a security force that was held to the same standards as the top special ops agents.

Still, they were still a far cry from his level.

And they were afraid.

    He could see it in their eyes as he dove into their midst, and the way they tried to track all parts of him at once, fingers tense against their triggers. He had to admire the fact that they hadn’t fled at the sight of him and what he could become. Remembering the agents he had trained with who had made the mistake of trying to escape …there had been little of them left for him to deal with… while these men were holding their ground, and ready to fire again at a moments notice. Perhaps they should’ve…

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the sound coming from all over at once. He wasn’t sure whether he was apologising to them for what was to come, or himself for what he was going to do, knowing that once this was over, the last vestiges of Jack Morrison would be gone for good.

   He saw them falter, whether at the words or just the sound of a voice coming from the depths of the smoke and then he was on them. More smoke than anything, as he materialised in their midst and the first startled noise had barely registered before he was moving again.  The nanite blade in his hand taking down the first agent before the others had even had a chance to open fire again, grunting as he felt a bullet catch his side, but the pain was little more than a fleeting reminder of humanity, the wound closing almost instantly, the nanites repairing the damage before it had even fully registered.

   They were good, and they were desperate, but they had never stood a chance against him, and for every blow, they landed on him another of their numbers fell. He felt no horror as he tore through them, ghosting between shots when he could and taking those he couldn’t avoid, almost savouring the terror when they would see his body knitting itself back together under their gaze. As Strike Commander, Jack Morrison hadn’t had any real power, his every move governed by the needs and laws of others…here he was free because he didn’t need to think about what he was doing, he just needed to act.

He let himself go.

     The techniques and strength he had honed for so long in the lab came to him easily. Too easily. The guards falling back, trying to flee, trying to plead for mercy as it finally dawned on them that he wasn’t a foe that they could defeat. There had been a time when their words would have stopped him, or at least given him pause, but even then, it had often taken Gabriel, his touch, his words to ground him and calm him.

_“Jack! Jack stop!” Gabriel’s hands were on his shoulder, pulling him away from the man in the chair. The agent who had just admitted that he had betrayed their movements during the previous mission which had left five other agents dead, Gabriel with a nasty concussion and broken ribs. His wounds were nearly healed, but not completely as he winced when Jack tried to pull free once more to get at the man, and it was that more than Gabriel’s quiet pleas that got him to settle. “Jack, you need to calm down.”_

He didn’t stop this time.

   Instead, he flung himself forward with a growl, bearing his target to the ground beneath his weight and letting himself go, becoming smoke and spreading out, until he covered every inch of the man. His nanites enhanced every sensation, the frantic beating of the man’s heartbeat, the gasping breaths beneath the tendrils of smoke that ghosting up his face. The man wasn’t going without a fight though, twisting and turning, movements that if Jack had been human, then it would have been difficult to restrain. Now though it was little more than a thought to tighten his grasp, nanites solidifying ever so slightly as he caged in his prisoner, looming back just enough to peer down at the man.

Fear.

It was written across his face.

    He descended on him, smoke seeping into his open mouth as the agent tried to scream, tendrils seeping into his ears and nose, blinding him. Once he had stolen all his senses, he set his nanites free. It was a talent they had discovered by accident one day when his training partners had managed to wound him more than normal, his nanites going into a frenzy once he had fallen apart, and descending on the nearest downed agent. He had devoured him. Later he had been told that it was his soul that he had eaten, his lifeforce, but at the time it had felt like he had taken everything, consumed it all and left nothing but ash and the taste of guilt in his mouth.

    Today there was no guilt, no hesitation. There was also no need to feed in this manner, his wounds already gone and, yet he didn’t stop. They had asked for abilities, he was merely following his orders, at least that was what he told himself as he felt he man disintegrating beneath his touch, turning to ash beneath the weight of the nanites.  It was easier than acknowledging the darker part of him that wanted to hurt the world that had turned their back on him and Gabriel, who had taken what they had built and destroyed it, the part of him that savoured the power he now had in his hands. It was easier than admitting that a part of him had needed this, had been hungering for it for the last few weeks, ever since he had first discovered this power.

   When he finally pulled back, there was nothing left beneath him but ash, and finally, he recoiled, slipping back before slowly beginning to pull himself back together. It was only when he was halfway back to normal that the silence registered, and slowly he lifted his head, a sinking, swooping feeling replacing the exhilaration of a moment ago as he realised that there was no one left to fight him, bodies scattered across the ground.

It was over.

**

   The rest of the mission, the retrieval of the data took a matter of minutes, the specially designed A.I. stick he had been provided easily burrowing through the systems protection, and he had watched blankly as it took every trace of information and data that it could get its hand on. He didn’t care what it was, it wasn’t his place to ask.

    Instead, his attention was riveted on the blood glistening against the material of his body suit, the ash that fell away when he brushed it with trembling fingers. He had known. He had always known that this was the only way this fight could possibly go. It was what he had been trained for, his purpose… he was a weapon. He had fought and won.

And yet…

    The computer beeped at him, breaking through his darkening thoughts and he when he looked at it he realised that the stick was glowing a faint green to tell him that the extraction was complete and slowly he reached out to retrieve it, holding it loosely in his palm as he stared down at it.

_This._

_I did all of this. Killed…_

_And for what?_

    He didn’t want to question what he had done. It hurt to even think that maybe he had been wrong, that he should have fought harder against the orders. _Why? Why should I?_ That was old thinking, thoughts that belonged to Jack Morrison, not him. He was nothing but a weapon. A soldier. He had nothing to fight for beyond what he was ordered, and nothing that was worth defying them. Yet, as he tilted his head and took in the bodies of the men he had killed, he felt his breathing beginning to speed up, a part of him that he didn’t want to feel again struggling to rise to the surface.

And then the communicator went off.

    He almost didn’t answer, not sure he could hide this…whatever, he was feeling at the moment… but he knew that disobedience was out of the question, and he reached up with shaky hands to activate the speaker.

_“Subject 76….”_  The name didn’t help matters, and he tensed, barely aware of the low growl he’d made or the silence that followed, before a different, but familiar voice came over the communicator. _“Soldier, stand down.”_   It was the voice that had guided him through most of his training, who had delivered his orders and smiled at him with mis-matched eyes when he had said that he didn’t want a name. At once the thin thread of tension snapped, and he released his prisoner, and stepped back, shoulders slumping as he muttered quietly.

“Understood.”

_“Return to the team and prepare for your immediate return to base, and Soldier?”_ He didn’t have it in him to speak right then, the pause having given him a chance to take in the devastation around him. The destruction he had caused, gaze lingering a little too long on the splatter of blood against the wall and each body. _Murderer._ He quashed that thought. The choice had been made if it could even be called that. He was a soldier, a weapon and he had survived his purpose, nothing more and nothing less. Remembering the question, he grunted, showing the voice, he was listening, almost wishing he hadn’t when they continued, a note of pride in the normally emotionless voice. _“Well done.”_

_Well done,_ he felt like he might choke on the praise, bile rising as he glanced down at himself and the state he was in and back at the destruction he had caused. Yet, even as he hated it, he felt something in his chest ease with those two words.

He had obeyed his orders.

He had served his purpose.

“Thank you.”

**

    When he rendezvoused with the rest of the agents at the perimeter fence, not one of them would meet his gaze, and it didn’t take him long to realise why when he spied the surveillance gear they were packing up, his gaze lingering on the screens. _They had seen. They had seen what kind of monster they were working with._ Yet, when he glanced at them from the corner of his eye, he would catch them sneaking looks at him, and while there was fear, unsurprising after how many agents he had gone through during training, there was no longer the wariness that had accompanied his journey here. Instead, there was something akin to respect in their gaze. Not the same overwhelming, hated respect he’d had as Strike Commander or the awe-struck respect that Jack Morrison had received as a hero of the Omnic Crisis… this was subtler, the respect given to something deadly but useful.

A weapon.

   He wasn’t naïve, he knew that this was only the beginning. The fact that he was returning unshackled and with that awful, haunting praise ringing in his ears meant that he had successfully been cleared for action in the field, and he knew that there was no way they would keep a weapon like him sheathed for long.

He wouldn’t.

****

Talon Base, Stuttgart

Basement Level: Secure Lab #008: Subject 76 (Report #0099)

    Following the successful completion of Subject 76’s trial mission, with minimal damage taken and full data retrieval, we are officially signing off on his training. While we will continue to monitor his physical state, and require access for further experimentation at times, Subject 76 will now be under the command of yourself and the rest of Talon Command.

M.D.


	8. Chapter 8

Barcelona, Spain.

**

It had been a mistake to visit Zurich.

    It had taken Gabriel all of a day after leaving the empty husk behind to realise that fact, the base haunting his thoughts. It had been on his mind almost constantly before, impossible to escape when he had been focussed on researching what had happened and watching the news on a loop, but this new fixation was different. Worse. Every time he closed his eyes it felt like he was back there, a ghost standing on hallowed ground, pinned by the gaze of all of those who had died. The men and women who had lost their lives, when he had managed to survive.

Then there were the nightmares.

    On the few occasions he allowed himself to close his eyes for more than a couple of minutes at a time, falling into a deep sleep, the nightmares came thick and fast. In them, the base was still on fire, explosions still ripping through it, the building burning and crumbling away before his horrified gaze as he staggered untouched through the smoke and flames.

Searching.

    He would never get far before he heard it, the sound almost lost beneath the noise of the fire and the sound of debris falling as the base slowly collapsed in on itself, and yet still unmistakably Jack’s voice. Jack calling for him, fear and desperation thick in his voice as he begged Gabriel to find him, pleaded with him to help him. Deep down he already knew that it was too late, that there was nothing he could do, even in this dreamscape he couldn’t accept that knowledge, the memory of Jack’s lying there etched into his memory, as inescapable as his current hellish existence. However, it was never enough to stop him from chasing the voice, from searching for Jack, trying however futilely to change the past even for a second.

    As he pushed his way through what remained of his home, the smoke giving way before him, he would glimpse faces and bodies, each one belonging to people he had known. Agents that he had trained and fought beside. Friends who had stood by him during the worst periods of the Crisis and the media backlash against Blackwatch. People who should still be alive. Eventually, he would break through them, stumbling away from their accusing gazes to where he had found Jack, seeing the spot where he had died, marked by blood and the abandoned, tattered remains of the Strike Commander’s coat and slowly he would lift his head, gaze searching.

And there he was.

    In these dreams, Jack wasn’t laid on the ground as he had been that day. Instead, he was standing, facing away from Gabriel as he stared up at the remains of their home. Their crumbling dream. He stood tall as he always had, and yet Gabriel wasn’t able to draw any comfort from that fact, instead only able to focus on the blood staining his ruined uniform and the wounds that had stolen his husband from him. At least until Jack turned, the movements jerky as though he wasn’t fully in control, as though a part of him was missing, and Gabriel might have believed it were it not for the look on Jack’s face when they finally faced each other. Jack was staring at him, lips twisted up in an ugly snarl, blue eyes burning in a face wrecked by death.

Anger.

Pain.

Hatred.

    Emotions that had only ever been conveyed through their arguments, in stinging words and awkward silences, were now written plainly across Jack’s face, and Gabriel recoiled under that burning gaze. He didn’t have the words or the will to defend himself from the silent accusations he could feel being flung against him, and he finally broke, falling to his knees when Jack would break the silence. He no longer spoke in the soft voice that Gabriel had fallen in love with, nor the striking tone of a commander that Gabriel had come to hate, instead when he spoke it was in a hoarse, ragged voice that Gabriel would never have recognised as Jack’s if he hadn’t seen his husband’s mouth move.

“Gabriel, why?”

_Why didn’t you save me?_

_Why are you still alive?_

Gabriel had no answers for him.

*

     He took to avoiding sleep as much as possible, an easy feat after years of getting by on minimal rest and made even easier by his new form, but he couldn’t last forever, and when he did give in to his body’s need to sleep, Jack was always there waiting. Haunting him, trapped within the memory of Zurich and demanding answers that Gabriel simply didn’t have.

_Yet._

****

    Las Ramblas was heaving, tourists and locals blending into a stream of humanity and for a moment Gabriel hesitated at the sight of them. He had been alone since he had fled the morgue, and the thought of plunging into that mess, no matter how briefly was intimidating. The safehouse behind him, mercifully untouched and hopefully still unknown was a tempting refuge, and he almost turned and slipped back inside. However, the spectre of Jack was still there, loitering at the back of his thoughts and he growled, knowing that he would get neither peace nor answers inside before he moved out into the open. He didn’t linger long, knowing that even in this hustle and bustle, his clothes and mask would draw unwelcome attention and he hastily shifted to smoke, slipping between the moving people, little more than a shadow as he headed for the sanctuary of the closest side street.

    It took him longer than he liked to reform his body in the shelter of a narrow archway, and he knew that he would have to practice further before he moved properly back into the field, the delay too much of a liability for him to ignore. The smoke was still sinking back under his skin, nanites settling when he emerged from his hiding place and continued on his way. Keeping to the shadows as much as possible, glad for the days that he and Jack had spent exploring these streets as it allowed him to lose himself in the side streets and back alleys without fear of getting lost. However, that also meant that he was assaulted by memories of that trip.

Jack pushing him up against the wall outside the small tapas bar.

The sweet shop where they had spent far too much on souvenirs for Fareeha.

The archway that they had kissed under, drawing wolf whistles when Gabriel had forgotten they were in public.

    Desperately he tried to think about other visits, missions, clandestine meetings. The reason why this had been his first port of call after Zurich, and for a minute or two it would work, but the memories wouldn’t fade, and he cursed under his breath.

_Jack, I wish that I could for…_

     He stopped that thought before it could finish forming, unable to lie to himself. He couldn’t, wouldn’t forget Jack. He just…

    Instincts honed over the years, and senses sharpened by the nanites that now formed a large part of his body were the only reason that he managed to dodge the man who had sprung at him, taking advantage of his distraction. He heard metal scrape against brick as he whirled, slamming his assailant's arm back into the wall and bearing down, hoping to force him to drop the knife in his hand. The blood on the blade told him that the man had landed a hit, but before he had even registered the burn on his arm, he could feel it healing, grimacing at the sensation, even as he filed it away for investigation later. Preferably when he didn’t have someone trying to kill him.

Or not…

    He blinked realising the man had gone still in his grasp, letting the knife fall from his hand as he held up his other in a symbol of surrender. Gabriel didn’t release him, he wasn’t that naïve, but he did loosen his grip just a little, tilting his head as he studied the man, noting the apprehension and recognition in the hazel eyes that were roving around the bone mask.

“Who are you?” He had an inkling, sharp eyes noting the points of a tattoo showing above the shirt collar and the silver pin in the shape of angel wings pinned to his tie. So, they had found him first. Safely hidden behind his mask he allowed himself to grimace, he’d known it was a risk, but he had been hoping to have some luck, wanting to scout out how much had changed since his last visit before it was too late to change his course. That option had now been taken out of his hands, because he knew that there would be other eyes on him right now, watching and waiting to see his reaction, and even with his new skills, it would be difficult to escape their trackers.

Besides he couldn’t afford more enemies.

    He was a different man than the one who’d been here last time, and it had been a long time since he had seen them. There was every chance that the relationship he had worked so hard to nurture back then had changed, that his contacts wouldn’t be as willing to help as they had been in the past. It was why he had wanted to wait, as he couldn’t afford a mistake this early in the game.

Game.

   The word left a foul taste in his mouth. In the past, once the Crisis had ended, and he had been shunted into the shadows he had seen work as a game. Blackwatch had been a game, a deadly one to be sure, but little more than a game. Every agent under his command had been a tool to be used, their skills an extension of his mind, there to help him advance or fortify his position as his needed, and his opponents. The men and women who had sought to disturb the peace, to stir up anti-Omnic sentiments or rebel against Overwatch had merely been other players on the board. Jack had been unimpressed with his analogy the first time he had made the mistake of sharing it aloud, staring at him with the haunted eyes of a man who bore too much and telling him a strange, stiff voice that none of this was a game. That war wasn’t a game, that life wasn’t a game and that maybe Gabriel should reconsider things if that was how he viewed the world.

    Gabriel had scoffed at the time, but now that he thought back to it, that had been the first crack that had appeared in their relationship. He just hadn’t been able to see it at the time, too caught up in the deadly game he was playing, certain that he would win.

And he had lost.

He wouldn’t make that mistake this time.

“Camila sent me.” His attention shot back to his prisoner, impressed that none of the apprehension in his eyes showed through in his voice. Then again, she had never been one for recruiting fools, it was how she had established such a power base in the city, and why her network of information had been so extensive and useful that Gabriel had chosen to utilise it and her, turning a blind eye to her less than savoury activities. Jack would never have approved, but Gabriel had long since accepted that fact and right now he simply didn’t care as long as he got the answers he needed. “She asked me to pass on her regards, and to ask if she should be expecting a visit from the Reaper.”

Reaper.

     That was a name he hadn’t heard in a long time. He might have been willing to bend if not outright break the rules when he was in Blackwatch, but he had never been foolish enough to give them any means of connecting the dots between Gabriel Reyes and the ‘mercenary’ who served them in return for information and so Reaper had been born. It was why he had dared to come back here. With no one any the wiser as to who the Reaper was, it was one of the few identities he could reuse, and it was appropriate, he thought with a grimace as he thought about his new existence, and the darker skills that had come with it.

And it reflected his goal.

    He wasn’t interested in justice. He had no intention of handing the culprits over to the U.N. even if it might have cleared their names. He was going to kill them. He was going to make them feel the same agony Jack had felt as he died in the ruins of the world he had fought to build and protect, he wanted them to feel that fear, that knowledge that no one was going to come for them.

And he wanted them to die.

“Yes,” he growled, finally releasing the man and stepping back to allow him to straighten, making no effort to form his guns even when the man scooped up his knife and tucked it back inside his sleeve. “Tell her I need information.” She would always know, it was the only reason he had ever sought her out, despite her less than obvious interest in taking the relationship to a more personal level, although he had a feeling it was just another weapon to keep him in the fold rather than any real emotion.

“On?”

“Zurich,” he wasn’t going to hide it. He wanted whoever had destroyed his life, who had taken Jack from him to know that he was hunting them. To know that he was coming for them, and he knew that no matter how subtle her informants were, that information would soon be trickling through the grapevines and hopefully into the right ears. “And anyone who had the power to bring Overwatch to its knees.” The man’s eyebrows crept higher at the request, curiosity written across his features, but his voice was even and professional as he asked.

“Payment method?”

“The usual.” He didn’t really want to take time out of his own mission to run whatever errands Camila decided to send him on, but whilst he had access to some of the funds he had squirrelled away over the years, he doubted it would be enough, and he would prefer to leave them untouched for when he really needed them. Besides, while he had practised and honed his skills over the past few weeks, he knew that it would be an entirely different matter using them in battle and it would be better to test them against opponents that he didn’t really care about.

“Camila will be dining at Lasarte this evening, eight p.m.” The man said after a moment, and Gabriel caught the way his eyes flickered to someone behind him, confirming before he added quietly. “It will be private.”

“I’ll be there.”

****

Four days later:

    Gabriel grumbled under his breath as he tried to find a more comfortable position on his perch before giving it up as a lost cause and directing his attention to the lorries being loaded below him, the men working beneath him having no idea that they were being watched. That they were being hunted. He might have pitied them were it not for the guns that he could see being packaged beneath the covering of shavings and faux antiques that they were being disguised as. It was an operation he had seen too many times in Blackwatch, someone always looking to cause conflict, whether it was between humans and Omnics or both, and it hurt to see that it was still happening when Overwatch and Blackwatch had been torn apart.

We could have prevented this.

Instead, they painted us as the criminals, took away the people that could stop this.

    It was almost tempting to let the men go, to see how the world would deal with the chaos that Overwatch had been working so hard to keep at bay. However, this was the price he had to pay for the information he wanted. The information he needed, because Jack’s spectre loomed larger than ever, made worse by the fact that he knew his husband would already have been down there taking out the men, not caring that he didn’t have backup or that there were countless leads he would be destroying.  Camila’s reason for sending him after them was far less noble. They were encroaching on her territory, and if these guns fell into the wrong hands…

   Not that their eventual destination would be much better. However, Gabriel had greater faith in her ability to curb the destruction than the men below them.

And it was the last job he had to complete before she would give him what he needed.

_“Reaper,” Camila smiled as she rose to her feet, moving to greet him, her bodyguard shadowing her movement, attention riveted on Gabriel and his hand resting on the weapon holstered at his side, the threat clear. “It’s been too long.” She grasped his arms, leaning up to press a kiss to each cheek, not flinching from the feel of the bone mask beneath her lips before she stepped back to study him, arching an eyebrow at him.  “And you’re wearing white now?” Gabriel shrugged, not commenting, knowing that if he did, the potential to give away too much information was too high._

_“You look as beautiful ever,” Gabriel murmured, changing the topic. He knew that she would notice, but she was also vain enough to take the compliment, besides it was true. She had always been stunning, and it seemed to him the last couple of years had added to it. No wonder her men watched her so protectively, and why she held power so easily without being too ruthless._

_“Charming as ever I see,” she replied, stepping back and walking back to the table, gesturing for him to follow. He obeyed without a word, ignoring the bodyguard who looked less than happy at their interaction, stepping around him so that he could settle into the seat opposite her, ignoring the glass of wine that was waiting for him. “I wonder, are you as handsome as you are charming?” Her eyes were sharp now, glancing at him as she leant forward. “Perhaps you’d let me take a peek, just a little glimpse of the man beneath the mask.”_

_“I think not,” Gabriel replied easily, falling back into the persona he had always adopted around her. That of the charming bachelor dancing just out of reach, a man of cool professionalism, even as his heart hammered in his chest at the thought of what would happen if he was unmasked here. He had changed, scars and grief lining his face, but he was still unmistakable especially after all the news coverage, but none of that clouded his voice as he waved a hand. “It’s safer for everyone.”_

_“Shame,” Camila murmured, sipping her wine, peering at him over the rim. Flirting, yet deadly serious at the same time. “I would love to see what lies under that mask.”_

_“I’m sure you would.” He also knew that she would love the chance to turn him in if she learnt who he really was, and so he stared at her, unmoving, expression unreadable behind his mask, and after a moment she sighed and set aside the glass._

_“It will take some time to gather the list you want,” she got straight to business, which told him that she had already started reaching out, relaxing a tiny bit, as that meant she was still willing to if not trust him, then use him. “There are quite a few names that will be on there after all, and many of them prefer not to have people nosing around.” It was a warning, both of the trouble he was heading towards and that the information wouldn’t come cheap, not that he had expected any different and he was calm as he replied._

_“Let me worry about that.”_

    Her price had been high. Five jobs, for a list of names. Gabriel hadn’t hesitated when he had agreed, trying not to think about how Jack would have reacted if he knew what path his husband was taking. The first four had been simple enough, retrieving delicate packages from under heavy guard, a task made simple by his new skills, his wraith form rendering security defenceless in front of him, and assassinations. The latter left a bitter taste in his mouth. As much as he was used to working in the shadows, he had never liked taking lives that way, much preferring to let his enemies see him coming and see his face, taking responsibility for his action. Still, it was the price that had to be paid, his thirst to avenge Jack stronger than ever as the news ran stories about fresh information that had been found, further incriminating the late Strike-Commander.

His second victim had been a messy kill, his rage getting the better of him.

    This final job would be even more so as he had been tasked with not only stopping the shipment and bringing it to Camila’s people but with giving the gang responsible a message. Seeing increased movement below him, the crates slowly being shifted towards the lorries he tensed, knowing that he had to act soon, and he closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. In the past he had used this moment to clear his thoughts, making sure he went into the mission with an empty mind and calm heart. Today, he used that moment to focus on his anger, letting the news reports replay through his mind and feeling Jack’s spectre looming once more as he buried what remained of Gabriel Reyes behind a mask, slowly opening his eyes once more as he felt the last bits of hesitation melt away.,

He was ready.

    He took a step towards the edge, smoke billowing around him, rolling ahead of him, his form already shifting as he stepped out into the air.

    Reaper dropped into their midst, guns forming just before he hit the ground in a swirling dance of death, each shot meeting its target. He didn’t falter, didn’t hesitate even as the white of his coat slowly turned crimson, carving a path of devastation through the gang who had been little more than small timers with delusions of power.  Caught up in the fight. Revelling in the power beneath his fingertips, as rather than worrying about reloading he just discarded the guns, new ones forming before the old ones had hit the ground, he missed the movement above him. The gun levelled at him, and in the end, it was only a twist to the side to take out a gang member who had been fleeing for shelter that saved him. It didn’t stop him from stumbling forward, focus broken.

Pain.

   Hot, fiery pain ran through his shoulder, and he could already feel the nanites trying to fix the damage as he straightened, glancing down to see the wound letting off little wisps of smoke, his own blood joining that already soaking his clothes. Snarling he pressed a hand against it, letting one of the guns dissipate, frowning as he realised that the nanites were struggling to heal him and his eyes were narrow as he sought out the shooter, locking onto the sniped nestled in his previous perch, gun aimed and ready to fire again.

They clearly thought they were out of reach.

    Furious and hurting Reaper shadow-stepped, hearing the bullet strike the concrete where he had been only seconds before. The sniper had no chance to recover as Reaper materialised in front of him, descending on him in a swirl of smoke, an angry, animalistic growl spilling free as he latched onto the man, forgetting all about his gun as clawed fingers tightened around the man’s throat. He wasn’t thinking about the mission anymore, he just wanted to hurt, to kill and something was calling to him, a humming in the air that only he could hear, and he chased it, his nanites surging forward, clamouring with a hunger he doesn’t fully understand.

He doesn’t need to.

    The nanites are wild now, free of his control and all he can do is go along for the ride as they wrapped themselves around the man, consuming him. Not his flesh, but something deeper, something integral to his existence. Reaper felt it, tasted it, hit by a rush of memories that weren’t his own, and he recoiled. Yet the disgust was lost as energy surged through him, and now he could feel the pain in his shoulder fading, his body knitting itself back together as the nanites retreated to him. Of his assailant, there was nothing, but a large pile of ashes left to indicate he existed and Gabriel staggered, coming back to himself as he stumbled to the side, stomach rolling violently, and he ended up doubled over, bringing up everything he had eaten that morning.

_What the hell am I?_

****

      Silence greeted Gabriel’s arrival as he stalked into the hotel dining room where Camila was waiting for him, and at any other time he would have taken delight in the way even she recoiled, eyes widening as she took in the state of him. He hadn’t bothered to clean up, wanting her and her people to see the proof of what he had done, but there was no pleasure in it or their reactions, his emotions still a churning storm in his chest. He was no closer to understanding what he had done to that man, and to be honest, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know. All he knew was that it was bad, inhuman… that he was a monster. It had taken him a while to pull himself together after that realisation, to finish the mission, and even now smoke danced across the surface of his clothes, showing his agitation.

“The list,” he demanded, amazed that his voice came out even, but relieved as he was currently the centre of attention and he couldn’t afford to show any weakness. Camila stared at him for a couple of minutes, and he was about to repeat his demand when she sighed and reached into the bag resting on the seat beside her, pulling out a tablet and holding it towards him.

“This is everything we have including locations,” she explained, and Gabriel’s eyebrows raised. That was more information than he had been expecting, and he stepped forward to take the tablet, turning it towards himself and scanning the screen. 

“There’s a lot of names.” _Too many…_

“I warned you,” Camila pointed out with a shrug. “Overwatch wasn’t popular.” Gabriel fought not to flinch at the matter of fact statement, he had known that Overwatch wasn’t popular in many of the circles that he had danced around in Blackwatch, had accepted it, but with the loss still so raw it hurt to hear it said aloud. He wasn’t sure if he had made a noise or given some sign of pain because Camila hesitated, an almost gentle expression on her face. “However, if you want my advice.” He nodded absently, needing somewhere to start even if it wasn’t the right place, but it was enough, and Camila rose to her feet and moved round to stand beside him, mindful not to touch his bloody clothes before leaning in and tapping a carefully manicured nail against the screen.   “I’d start with them.”

“Talon…” Gabriel muttered. It was a name he knew all too well, having tangled with them more than once and having caught several agents, both Blackwatch and Overwatch who unintentionally and intentionally had been feeding them intel, but the organisation had never shown the capability of a large-scale attack like the one at Zurich. Unless he had missed something.

_I failed._

“They have the motivation, the funding and the skill to carry out an attack like that,” Camila informed him, and Gabriel scowled. His intel had led him to believe that they had more resources that they had shown so far, it was why he’d had Genji poking around Talon before the younger agent had moved into Overwatch properly, but nothing on the level that would have been necessary to attack Zurich. The tablet creaked in protest as his grip tightened, self-loathing seeping into his anger. It had happened on his watch, behind his back…and he had paid the price. “My money would be on them.”

“Thank you.”

“You paid for it,” Camila brushed off the empty gratitude, her expression hardening once more as she stepped back.  “Our deal is done.” However, her eyes betrayed as she added quietly. “If you are ever in the market for more information, I would be more than willing to watch you work again.” Gabriel nodded curtly, accepting the offer, both knowing that he wasn’t likely to be coming back. He slipped the tablet away into his pocket, unwilling to dismiss the other names completely until he knew for sure. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again and turned on his heel without a word, it was time to move on.

_Jack…. I have a name…_


	9. Chapter 9

Talon Base, Stuttgart

Internal communication:

    Your work with Subject 76 has been exemplary, he has proven to be an asset, and his results since we have started to utilise him in the field have silenced the last few questioning voices on the Council. As such I am delighted to announce that your appeal for more funding has been approved, although there are certain terms that must be met, although I am sure that you expected as much. The Council asks that you continue the nanite research, with a focus on the creation of other agents such as 76. However, they have stressed that future funding will be dependent on your ability to remove the few problems that have persisted with Subject 76.

    As such you are required to present to the board a plan for taking this project forward and dealing with these issues by the end of next month.

M

****

     He stepped out of the shower and retrieved his towel, gingerly rubbing at his skin, feeling his nanites giving way in places when he pressed a little too hard, and he grimaced at the sensation, wondering if he would ever get used to it. And wondering what it would mean for him, and whatever trace of humanity he still had if he did, although he was sure that the didn’t want to know the answer to that question.  As he dried himself off, he carefully kept his gaze on anything but his body, or the mirror on the wall, still unable to bear the sight of what he had become. Unfortunately, there was no way for him to miss the feel of it, fingers passing over the raised scars that crisscross his body, feeling them dip in places when his form threatened to dissolve on him, and he shuddered.

_I should have died. I should be dead._

     No matter what he tried he couldn’t chase those thoughts away, they were always there, a quiet murmur hidden away beneath a blank expression and empty gaze. It was a weakness he couldn’t afford, and so he pretended it didn’t exist. If his handlers knew about it, they gave no sign, and he was keen to maintain that equilibrium. He was useful as he was, a weapon, a tool. Those thoughts, those weakness should have died in that room along with his faith in the people he had spent a lifetime trying to protect. He shook his head, trying to drive the thoughts out, past the lump that had risen in his throat, he nearly stumbled in his haste to retrieve the bodysuit that he had hung on the back of the door. He needed the security it could give him, the rigid material comforting at this point, and as he slid it on and fastened it into place, he felt the lump in his throat subsided.

     There was movement on his shoulder, the little creature that had disappeared the moment he’d stepped under the scalding water emerging from his collar and he felt his lips quirk as it berated him. At some point, over the last few weeks, they had learnt to communicate in their own way, although there was little sense to be made from the range of chirps and shrill whistles. Not all of them could do it either, their ability seemingly tied to his stability, as the more he started to come apart at the seams, the less they could do. He reached up and gently ran a finger over its head, the only gentleness he would allow himself these days, and the shrill scolding faded away into soft chirp that reminded him of the kitten he’d adopted as a young boy. He hastily snatched his hand away before the memory could take hold, ignoring the disappointed noise that greeted the reaction and heading for his bedroom.

   The room beyond wasn’t huge, but it was spacious compared to the lab and more homely. He wasn’t permitted to come and go from the base without permission, not that he had much incentive to consider how the world had chosen to view him and Gabriel, but his handlers had done their best to give him accommodations that would lessen any potential dissatisfaction. He almost wished that they hadn’t, missing the blankness and anonymity of the lab, down there it hadn’t mattered that he was little more than a weapon. There had been no expectation for him to settle down, to make a home. Not that he had, the room was as bare as it had been the day he had been ushered through the door, the only difference was that the wardrobe now held replicas of the bodysuit he was currently wearing.

    The emptiness only served to remind him of what he had lost. His…their…quarters had always been filled with signs of their life together, to the point where Ana had once joked that they should get an extra room just to keep all the mementoes in.

_Don’t think about it…_

    He glanced around, desperate for a distraction, his gaze lingering for a moment on the screen in the corner of the room which he was free to use now that they had nothing more to hide about what was happening in the world. It had been there from day one, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to turn it on. The thought of listening to more lies about them, about Gabriel… he growled under his breath, ignoring the soothing noise from his shoulder before spinning towards the door, intending to head down to the training rooms to try and distract himself. Although now that he was a functioning member of Talon, he was forbidden from fighting against the other agents which left the training bots, and even on the highest setting they were no challenge, but it was better than staying in this empty room with the memories pressing in on him.

    He had just opened the door, still caught by surprise that he had the freedom to do so even though it had been weeks since he had moved into the main part of the base when the communicator just inside his room buzzed, and he froze. It hadn’t taken him long to become accustomed to that noise, although the first time it had gone off without warning he had disintegrated into smoke in alarm and had been trapped between forms for over an hour much to his handler’s disapproval. Now though, he had come to associate the noise with missions, it was about the only time people sought out his company, even now that he had proved himself a loyal tool. And they were never pleasant missions, his role was to be a weapon that cut down their enemies, and they used him as such.

Today, the thought of being that was a relief.

     It was easier to lose himself, to banish the thoughts that plagued him when he was on a mission because he had his orders and all that was left to him to do was obey them. He didn’t have to worry about the morality of it, the paperwork or the public backlash, those weights had been lifted from his shoulders, and as much as he hated what had happened. What he had become. He couldn’t help but feel relieved. He could feel the creature relaxing against his shoulder, mirroring his shift in emotions and he felt steadier than before as he reached for the communicator. “I’m coming,” he murmured before they said a word, and he got a muffled acknowledgement before he hung up and left the room without a backwards glance.

**

     There was no faceless voice giving him orders these days. Instead, he was ushered into a lavishly decorated room, dominated by a large oval table that took up most of the available space. As usual most of the seats were empty, although files and empty glasses indicated that they hadn’t been before. However, he buried the tiny flicker of curiosity before it could blossom. He didn’t need to know who else had the right to sit at the table. Instead, he lifted his head and gazed at the Omnic sat on the far side of the table. Maximilien had become his chief handler after that first mission and sometimes he almost missed the cold, aloof voice that had given him his orders in the past. Because there was something unnerving about the crimson optics that were currently surveying him as they always did when he was summoned, and he couldn’t help but wonder what he saw when he looked at him.

A Weapon?

A Soldier?

Or a tamed monster…

    He waited patiently, unwilling to break the silence, still unused to speaking much even if he was forced to interact more than he had down in the lab. Besides, it wasn’t his place to speak.  It didn’t take long for Maximilien to get down to business, leaning forward, his gaze never leaving him. “We have received intel about unusual activity of an abandoned military base that has fallen under our command, and we have reason to believe that the intruders intend to move against us.” The Omnic turned, muttering a sharp command to the display behind him and the screen flashed up behind him, displaying a map of Paris before it zeroed in on an area a short distance behind the city limits and 76 swallowed as memory stirred. He remembered staring at a similar map countless times, and a shiver worked its way down his spine as he realised what he was looking at.    

It was an Overwatch base…

     It was an old base, one of the first that they had used before Zurich had been established and U.N. funding had allowed them to relocate to better facilities. As far as he knew it had been kept online with a skeleton staff, used primarily by Blackwatch as a staging point for European missions that were too delicate to be handled from Zurich. _And they gave it away…_ He knew that Overwatch was gone, and privately he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe that was a good thing despite the way that it had happened, but it still hurt to know that parts of the organisation were being sold off and given away, especially to organisations like Talon that stood against everything Overwatch had represented.

    He didn’t voice that thought though, instead internalising a wince as he wondered what that made him… after all, he could have pushed his defiance, kept fighting their commands until they were forced to eliminate him. _But why?_ Gabriel’s face flashed through his mind, the accusations…the creature on his shoulder crooned, trying to reassure and calm him at once and he saw the crimson optics narrow and took a deep breath, sealing those thoughts away and standing straight.

“I understand.” There was no tremble to his voice, nothing but the still crooning creature on his shoulder to show that he was anything but calm. Inside though he was shuddering as he realised that if the base was being occupied by people working against Talon, there was a chance that they were former Overwatch agents, maybe even men and women he had known. Behind his mask, he could feel his expression twisting, emotions threatening to get the better of him, wisps of smoke escaping from gaps in the bodysuit as his control wavered and he gritted his teeth. _Focus on the mission. Follow your orders. Don’t think about it…_ “When do I leave?”

“Immediately, a plane is being prepared as we speak,” Maximilien replied, and he sighed with relief. It gave him less time to doubt what he was doing, to think about things that were no longer under his control and he nodded his agreement before stepping back towards the door. He was never given detailed briefings because if he was being sent in, it meant that everything was to be destroyed. However, he had just turned to leave when Maximilien spoke again. “Soldier…”

     He paused. That name was a compromise between them, as his handlers had grown irritated at his continued refusal to take a name. At least ‘Soldier’ was impersonal. It demanded nothing from him but obedience, and he took a deep breath before turning back to look at the Omnic with a soft questioning noise, although he already a sinking feeling that he knew what he wanted, and he wasn’t disappointed as those too bright optics focused on him and ordered firmly.  “I want no survivors.” It was another test and he wondered if something had shown in his expression, however, if the Omnic had been expecting him to object or refuse he was to be disappointed, because whilst there was a pang at the thought of facing his own people, he couldn’t forget the accusations and lies that had been levelled at Gabriel. If these were Overwatch agents, then they should have spoken out. They should have defended them.

Instead, they had chosen silence.

“Understood.”

****

London, England

    Gabriel was impassive as he stared up at Big Ben with a blank expression. He had been reluctant to return to London, unwilling to see the what had become of the city following the uprising even though he had been unable to monitor the recovery operation due to the backlash that had greeted their actions here. What made it worse though was that mission had been the last time he and Jack had worked together with the ease and trust built up during the Crisis, he had overstepped, gone behind Jack’s back and encouraged Jack to go against the orders from their superiors, and yet Jack had supported him. He had accepted that he wasn’t telling him everything, and still worked with him, still defended him…

_Jack should have been the one to see this._

    There were still areas that were cordoned off, the damage so severe that it would take years to fully repair and that was dependent on whether they found funding to replace what Overwatch had been pouring into the relief efforts. But, it was recovering. And in several places, he had seen murals depicting the strike team who had fought to save them, although all but one had clearly had someone trying to scrub them away. The city probably reluctant to associate itself with Overwatch after Zurich, even though it and its people owed their lives to them. He growled, suddenly glad that Jack wasn’t here to see what the world was doing to their legacy, fingers itching to tear the place apart so that they could feel his pain.

    Fortunately, there was movement in the dark behind him, distracting him before he could give into the urge to lash out, and he turned, staring impassively at the plain looking man who seemed to have materialised beside him. Codex, an informant that had helped ‘Reaper’ in the past, faltered a little at the sight of the bone mask, but it was quickly hidden behind a weak smile. He had never been happy that Gabriel had chosen to mask himself, but he had been reluctant to turn away the custom and, so they had let it slip, and Gabriel was glad for it now, as it meant he still had a reliable avenue of information even if that source was now firmly entrenched in Talon.

     From what he had garnered since coming to the city after his success in Barcelona, the informant had been with them for a long time, although his loyalty was ultimately to himself and the sale of information which was why he had never baulked at helping Reaper. It left an unpleasant taste in Gabriel’s mouth to know that he’d had contact with Talon for so long, but he hid his disgust because right now that link was exactly what he needed.

“You received my package?” He asked, no hint of his true emotions bleeding through, although Codex flinched at the low growl he used.

“I did,” Codex replied, his thin, nasally voice setting Gabriel’s nerves on edge. “You do nice work.” _No, I’m just more than your targets expected to have sent their way,_ he thought with disgust. While he had done some research into the other names on the list Camila had given him, his focus had always been on Talon from the moment she’d given her assessment of them and everything he had found so far, pointed to a network that he should’ve discovered and destroyed a long time ago.

    However, there were limits to what you could find from the outside, and so steeling himself, he had sent out tendrils, seeking a way inside. Selling himself as a mercenary was nothing new, it was an approach the Reaper had used before when taking down targets, and it hadn’t been long before he started getting jobs. Some had been minor, and clearly unrelated to Talon, but others stank of his prey, and he had pursued those doggedly, hardening his heart as he took on jobs that would have had Jack turning in his grave. As a SEP graduate and Blackwatch operative, he had already been deadly, but the enhancements from the nanites had made him virtually unstoppable, and he had quickly begun to make a name for Reaper, and he had barely landed in London before Codex. Or should that be Talon had reached out, offering him a ludicrous amount of money to take out an organisation that had been working to restore peace between Omnics and humans.

    The money hadn’t interested him, although he would keep it, knowing that he would need all the resources he could gather if he wanted to take down Talon. No, it had been the fact that it was the first time his ‘employer’ had clearly indicated they were part of Talon that had him taking the job at once, even though it had left a sick feeling in his stomach when he had torn through the offices of the organisation, leaving no survivors as requested. It had felt like he was further undermining Overwatch’s work. Jack’s work…but he’d had no choice, he just hoped that the rewards would be worth it and that Jack would forgive him when he finally got to see him again on the other side. “I’ve been asked to give you this,” Codex murmured, dragging him from his dark thoughts as he nudged him with a thick manila envelope.

“What is it?” Gabriel asked, cautiously accepting the file but making no effort to open it. His contact had been trustworthy so far, but he had no doubt that for the right price that could change, and he hadn’t been blind to the fact that he had been tailed on this last job although he had given no sign that he had spotted the sniper who had watched the entire bloodbath. However, if they suspected who he really was, he was sure that they would have tried to move against him already, he would just need to be cautious as he moved forward, which was why he refused to open the envelope without an explanation.

“An invitation,” Codex replied easily, and there was no sign of the twitch that usually appeared in his eye when he was trying to pull the wool over Reaper’s eyes, usually a trick he reserved when it had come to paying him back in the day. “I’m not the only one to notice your work.” _Talon…_ Gabriel thought, glad of his mask as he felt a triumphant smirk threatening to escape, even as he carefully kept his grip on the envelope relaxed.

“A job offer?”

“Of sorts,” Codex nodded. Reaper didn’t like the vague answer, but there was something about the informant’s body language that told him not to push, even though he knew that he could have taken the man down even before the sniper if they were still watching could get a shot off. “But the payment will be worth any trouble you have.”

“I see.” Gabriel murmured, knowing that they had him there. Reaper had always sold his services for high prices, and he had earned a reputation that meant he deserved them and he knew that if he refused, they could well decide to take a closer look at him. Something that he could ill afford, especially now that he was finally making progress. He watched the other man for a moment, searching for any hints of an imminent betrayal before he finally turned his attention to the envelope, slicing it open with his talons and pulling out the documents he contained. Behind the security of his mask, his eyebrows rose as he found himself staring down at aerial photos of what had once been an Overwatch base, one that he had frequented many times during his Blackwatch days. As far as he was aware it had been abandoned with the fall, and yet the photos showed lights and a vehicle moving down the airfield, and he had to fight to stop his grip from tightening. _Can’t they let sleeping ghosts lie…_

    He had no idea if the occupants were tied to Overwatch or Blackwatch, but the thought of fighting against them, if they were…he wanted to refuse, the words threatening to bubble up as the spectre of Jack loomed over his shoulder. He had already failed once, how could he bear to take arms against them now? And yet…what choice did he have? These photos, and the sheet detailing the job which he read with dark eyes… _‘Remove intruders, with no survivors…’_ This time his grip did tighten, and he could feel his form wavering, smoke dancing over the white of his armour. _‘Discover what they were doing on the base, and relay all relevant information at a follow-up briefing…’_ That last bit was what made up his mind, the implication that he would need to meet them in person to pass on the information forcing him to take a deep breath force himself to calmness, as he lifted his head and replied coldly. “Tell them, I’ll be there.”

_Jack, I’m getting a little closer…_

_I’m just afraid of what it’s going to cost me…._


End file.
